Effect of apparatus characteristics on anxiety-like behavior in young adult and old mice of both sexes assessed by the elevated plus maze assay

Incidence of anxiety-like disorders in humans has been shown to decrease with aging; however, it is still under debate whether there are similarities mice, which would support the use mouse models understanding neuronal network changes that regulate behavior aging. One most common tests used assess laboratory animals elevated plus maze (EPM). Although several variables, such as room brightness and width arms, have influence spontaneous animal during EPM test, none these variables ever evaluated aging understand their possible differential effect on younger older mice. We therefore decided investigate apparatus construction young adult old mice both sexes test performance. Our results show distance traveled variable affected by characteristics independent age sex. also found was key demonstrating spent more time had relatively entries open arms compared suggesting a age. Taken together, our data demonstrate dramatically affect outcome wider arm being effective revealing age-dependent behavior, thus, when conducting studies