Behavioral Assessment of Hearing in Mice

Five conditioned and five unconditioned response procedures for assessing hearing in mice are reviewed. The five conditioned response procedures are conditioned suppression/avoidance, go/no-go, eyeblink conditioning, avoidance conditioning, approaching the source of a sound, and GSR conditioning. Of these, the conditioned suppression/avoidance procedure is the most effective as it has the shortest training time, allows the most trials to be given, holds the animal’s head fixed in the sound field, and is successful with animals considered difficult to test. The five unconditioned procedures are the acoustic startle reflex, prepulse inhibition, pinna movements, freezing response, and GSR. Of these, the prepulse inhibition procedure holds the most promise for auditory testing—unlike other unconditioned response procedures, it is it capable of demonstrating an animal’s ability to detect low intensity sounds as well as its ability to discriminate between sounds.