D-AP7

The Shuttle Box Test for TDPA, or temporally dissociated passive avoidance, measures hippocampus-dependent associative learning by testing whether a rodent avoids entering a dark compartment that was previously paired with foot shock after a temporal delay between dark-compartment entry and shock delivery. The main behavioral readout is crossover or step-through latency from the light chamber into the dark chamber; increased latency across training or retention trials reflects learned avoidance memory rather than motor performance alone.

Neuronal voltage-sensitive dye imaging detects membrane-potential-dependent optical changes from dyes associated with neuronal membranes, enabling optical recording of electrical activity from single neurons, dendrites, axons, spines, or neuronal populations in brain slices and cultured neurons. VSD signals are typically reported as fractional fluorescence or absorbance changes over baseline, such as ΔF/F or ΔI/I, and published protocols use high-speed cameras or photodiode arrays because neuronal voltage signals occur on millisecond time scales. Fast VSD imaging can be applied at two common scales: bulk staining of brain slices to measure circuit-level spatiotemporal activity, and single-cell loading or biolistic delivery to record membrane-potential transients from individual neuronal compartments. Optical signals should be interpreted as membrane-potential-related readouts, and validation by simultaneous electrophysiology or pharmacological controls is recommended when the experimen