Abstract
BackgroundLocomotor activity of rodents is an important readout to assess well-being and physical health, and is pivotal for behavioral phenotyping. Measuring homecage-activity with standard and cost-effective optical methods in mice has become difficult, as modern housing conditions (e.g. individually ventilated cages, cage enrichment) do not allow constant, unobstructed, visual access. Resolving this issue either makes greater investments necessary, especially if several experiments will be run in parallel, or is at the animals’ expense. The purpose of this study is to provide an easy, yet satisfying solution for the behavioral biologist at novice makers level.ResultsWe show the design, construction and validation of a simplified, low-cost, radar-based motion detector for home cage activity monitoring in mice. In addition we demonstrate that mice which have been selectively bred for low levels of anxiety-related behavior (LAB) have deficits in circadian photoentrainment compared to CD1 control animals.ConclusionIn this study we have demonstrated that our proposed low-cost microwave-based motion detector is well-suited for the study of circadian rhythms in mice.
Highlights
Locomotor activity of rodents is an important readout to assess well-being and physical health, and is pivotal for behavioral phenotyping
Animal care taking and experiments were performed in compliance with the European Economic Community (EEC) directive on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes (2010/63/EU)
Each logic output from up to six X-Band Motion Detectors is fed into three dual, monostable, retriggerable multivibrators (SN74LS423), which transform the short pulses in the microsecond range, to pulses of at least 1 s
Summary
Locomotor activity of rodents is an important readout to assess well-being and physical health, and is pivotal for behavioral phenotyping. Measuring homecage-activity with standard and cost-effective optical methods in mice has become difficult, as modern housing conditions (e.g. individually ventilated cages, cage enrichment) do not allow constant, unobstructed, visual access. Further we have applied the proposed system to assay circadian rhythmicity and photoentrainment in a mouse model which was initially established to resemble a low anxiety-related behavior (LAB) phenotype [21]. Those animals have been found in addition to mimic certain characteristics of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) [22], including increased locomotor activity in emotionally challenging behavioral tasks as well as a slightly disturbed sleeping pattern [23]. We could demonstrated that LAB animals show a drastically increased homecage locomotor activity and suffer from deficits in photoentrainment
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