Behaviour batteries

Its important to clearly identify healthy from affected individuals when working with Natural models of disease or ageing.

Presence (✓) or absence (−) of AD pathological features is indicated (Braidy et al., 2015). or sporadic AD.

Deacon and colleagues (2015) identified for the first time by studying species-typical behaviours in old degu AD-like and healthy unaffected animals of the same age, which allows the possibility of pharmacological studies in this rodent. The tests of daily living are quicker tests than most of the commonly used learning and memory paradigms, such as the Morris water-maze and moreover, model another aspect of behaviour that assails AD patients at early stages in the disease process. Namely loss of activities of daily living (ADL) (Deacon et al., 2015a). The majority of studies with degu have compared aged vs young individuals, wrongly assuming that aged degu are all AD-like whereas young degu are all healthy. This approach evidently introduces errors in the analysis. Contrary to that previously work we have shown that not all old degu have AD-like or ageing symptoms as well as not all young degu are behaviourally and neuropathologically healthy animals (Deacon et al., 2015). This is a crucial step to study natural models, to have robust tools to identify the affected from the unaffected animals.

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