Influence of environmental enrichment on an object recognition task in CF1 mice

Environmental enrichment (EE) is an experimental model for studying neuroplasticity. EE is used to investigate behavioral modifications associated with gene–environmental interaction. The object recognition task (ORT) evaluates animals' ability to learn about their environment, which depends on their innate instinct. By using young CF1 mice, the present study evaluated the effect of 8 weeks of EE on the ORT. Our results indicate that EE decreased the time the animals spent exploring familiar and unfamiliar objects and total time spent exploring both objects, without affecting the capacity of discrimination of objects. These findings indicate a more propitious behavior for species survival in animals subjected to EE, including rapid exploration and learning about the environment.