Interview with Dr.

Bissonette

The mice are models of one aspect of mental illness, not the mental illness as a whole.
The critias of mental illnesses can be broken up and studied individually

What sort of disorders have you looked into through the models?
o focused on cognitive inflexibility
o in humans, theres a neuropsychology test called wisconsin test
o examples
UNO game- we do this everyday.
switching between colors and numbers, switching with friends and
family,
simple things
severe anxiety disorder, schizophrenia- cant treat cognitive and
switching two competing types of rules
study neural circuits revolving that
tasks equivalent to humans
o looked at human data and mutants
have you found the solution
o no. no simple cure for the complex disorders
o cant be sure what the cause is
o schizophrenia has a lots of damage to many systems
o most intractable things: manage cognitive and negative psychosis
tested mice with different antipsychotic medicines
o Administer PPP
o no they have not
different brain structures with mutated and regular mice
o no gross abnormalities
o missing a significant proportion of inventory neuron cortex
o matches a human data
o decrease of inventory cortex
how do mutated mice interact with normal mice
o havent looked into it too much
o theres no difference
o breed them with controlled animals to keep the gene's fine
o have not checked vocalization
o breed well, general behavior isnt affected
referring to article about cannabis
o not sure
tests for genetically mutated mice to help them function better
o the impaired mice are slightly slower than normal mice but with time and experience you
can bring them at the same cognitive level
Do the same things apply to humans?
o its wide in spectrum
o it can apply to some individuals and to some, not so much.
Young mice or adult mice?
o matured, adult mice
what trials they do to the mice?
o smell tests

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took different spices and building materials and they had a reversal tasks
they reverse rewards
sawdust is rewarded, bark is not; bark is rewarded, sawdust is not
shift between rules
shift between odor, ignore the digging material
guidance of prefrontal cortex
can you tell which mice are genetically mutated?
hard time telling through visual
can tell with their behavior

slower to shift

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