Behavioral activity and accumulation of cyclic AMP in brain slices of strains of mice.

Accumulations of cyclic AMP elicited by norepinephrine, adenosine and a norepinephrine-theophylline combination were measured in cerebral cortical slices from several inbred mouse strains. There were no apparent correlations between the responses of cyclic AMP-generating systems and active avoidance learning for seven strains. Adenosine-elicited accumulation of cyclic AMP and sponteneous behavioral activity did show an inverse correlation in four inbred mouse strains. In individual mice of a randomly bred strain, ability to learn an avoidance task appeared inversely correlated with responsiveness of cortical cyclic AMP-generating systems to norepinephrine, but showed no significant correlation with responsiveness to adenosine.