Research on the impact of diet and memory has garnered considerable attention while exploring the link between obesity and cognitive impairment. High-fat diet (HFD) rodent models recapitulate the obesity phenotype and subsequent cognitive impairments. While it is known that HFD is associated with sensory impairment, little attention has been given to the potential role these sensory deficits may play in recognition memory testing, one of the most commonly used cognitive tests. Because mice utilize their facial whiskers as their primary sensory apparatus, we modified a common recognition test, the novel object recognition task, by replacing objects with sandpaper grits at ground level, herein referred to as the novel tactile recognition task (NTR). First, we tested whisker-manipulated mice in this task to determine its reliance on intact whiskers. Then, we tested the HFD mouse in the NTR. Finally, to ensure that deficits in the NTR are due to cognitive impairment and not HFD-induced sensory deficiencies, we tested the whisker sensitivity of HFD mice via the corner test. Our results indicate that the NTR is a whisker dependent task, and that HFD mice exhibit tactile recognition memory impairment, not accompanied by whisker sensory deficits.

中文翻译：

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高脂肪饮食会损害小鼠的触觉辨别记忆。

在探索肥胖与认知障碍之间的联系时，对饮食和记忆影响的研究引起了相当大的关注。高脂肪饮食 (HFD) 啮齿动物模型概括了肥胖表型和随后的认知障碍。虽然已知 HFD 与感觉障碍有关，但很少有人注意到这些感觉缺陷在识别记忆测试中可能发挥的潜在作用，这是最常用的认知测试之一。因为老鼠利用它们的面部胡须作为它们的主要感觉器官，我们修改了一个常见的识别测试，即新的物体识别任务，通过在地面用砂纸代替物体，称为新的触觉识别任务 (NTR)。首先，我们在这项任务中测试了胡须操纵的老鼠，以确定它对完整胡须的依赖。然后，我们在 NTR 中测试了 HFD 鼠标。最后，为了确保 NTR 的缺陷是由于认知障碍而不是 HFD 引起的感觉缺陷，我们通过角落测试测试了 HFD 小鼠的晶须敏感性。我们的结果表明 NTR 是一项依赖于胡须的任务，并且 HFD 小鼠表现出触觉识别记忆障碍，不伴有胡须感觉缺陷。