To assess cognitive function, alcohol and saccharin exposed 3xTg-AD and WT mice were tested in the Morris Water Maze (MWM), which is a hippocampal-dependent measure of place navigation (Morris, Garrud, Rawlins, & O’Keefe, 1982). The MWM is widely used as a preclinical measurement of reference memory and working memory (Webster et al., 2014). At the conceptual level, the MWM task recapitulates symptoms seen in human AD patients including confusion and getting lost due to difficulty with navigation. Numerous mouse genetic models of AD have been tested in the MWM and most show diminished performance that is consistent with AD-like cognitive deficits (e.g., Lalonde, Dumont, Staufenbiel, & Strazielle, 2005; Ohno et al., 2007; Webster et al., 2014).
