A new mouse model of ADHD for medication development

Abstract

ADHD is a major societal problem with increasing incidence and a stagnant track record for treatment advances. A lack of appropriate animal models has partly contributed to the incremental advance of this field. Hence, our goal was to generate a novel mouse model that could be useful for ADHD medication development. We reasoned that hyperactivity is a core feature of ADHD that could easily be bred into a population, but to what extent other hallmark features of ADHD would appear as correlated responses was unknown. Hence, starting from a heterogeneous population, we applied within-family selection over 16 generations to produce a High-Active line, while simultaneously maintaining an unselected line to serve as the Control. We discovered that the High-Active line demonstrated motor impulsivity in two different versions of the Go/No-go test, which was ameliorated with a low dose of amphetamine, and further displayed hypoactivation of the prefrontal cortex and dysregulated cerebellar vermal activation as indexed by c-Fos immunohistochemical staining. We conclude that the High-Active line represents a valid model for the Hyperactive-Impulsive subtype of ADHD and therefore may be used in future studies to advance our understanding of the etiology of ADHD and screen novel compounds for its treatment.