Several laboratories have provided ample evidence to suggest that ERP components, including a late positivity, can be obtained from mice (see Ehlers and Somes, 2002; Siegel et al., 2003; Umbricht et al., 2005). Like most ERP studies using rodents as subjects a “passive” auditory oddball paradigm has been used to generate ERPs in mice. The advantages of a passive paradigm are that it can be administered to human and other animal subjects without extensive prior training, and it does not require the subject to respond to the stimuli. These passive paradigms have been efficiently used in mouse studies where large numbers of subjects are necessary for instance, in the screening of drugs or testing line/sex differences (Slawecki et al., 2003; Connolly et al., 2004; Maxwell et al., 2004; Amann et al., 2008; Ehrlichman et al., 2008; Gandal et al., 2008; Rudnick et al., 2009).
