Abstract
The sucrose preference test (SPT) is a reward-based test, used as in indicator of anhedonia. Anhedonia, or the decreased ability to experience pleasure, represents one of the core symptoms of depression. Rodents are born with an interest in sweet foods or solutions. Reduced preference for sweet solution in SPT represents anhedonia, while this reduction can be reversed by treatment with antidepressants. SPT is carried out in the animal’s home cage. For the SPT, mice are presented with 2 dual bearing sipper tubes. One tube contains plain drinking water, and the second contains a sucrose solution. Water and sucrose solution intake is measured daily, and the positions of two bottles is switched daily to reduce any confound produced by a side bias. Sucrose preference is calculated as a percentage of the volume of sucrose intake over the total volume of fluid intake and averaged over the testing period. Here, we present our protocol that has been able to detect anhedonia in mice subjected to a chronic depression model.
Keywords: Anhedonia, Sucrose preference, Chronic despair model, Depression
Materials and Reagents
Equipment
Procedure
Representative data
Figure 2. Sample data from sucrose preference test performed on control (Cntr), chronically despaired mice (CDM) and CDM treated for 4 weeks with classical antidepressant (CDM+AD)
Notes
Acknowledgments
The protocol described here has been adapted from a previous study (Serchov et al., 2015), which succeeded in assessing anhedonia in mice subjected to model of chronic depression. This work was supported by grants from the German Research Council (DFG) (CA 115/5-4) to D.v.C. and K.B., the European Union FP7 program “MoodInflame” to D.v.C. and German Ministry for Research and Education (DMBF) grant e:bio – Modul I –ReelinSys (Project B: 031 6174A) to K.B.
References
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