Abstract
Two-bottle choice tests are a widely used paradigm in rodents to determine preference between two liquids, with utility for testing animal models of addiction, depression and anhedonia. The following paper describes a 3D-printed, Arduino controlled two-bottle choice test that automatically reads and records drinking behavior in rats to allow for detailed analysis of their drinking microstructure. While commercial products exist use lickometers to measure the microstructure of licking, this design uniquely incorporates hydrostatic depth sensors to allow for real-time volumetric measurements in addition to traditional beam break lick sensing, allowing for licking and drinking microstructure analysis. The goal of this design is to provide a user friendly, affordable apparatus that can study unique, complex behaviors without requiring the purchase of specialized scientific equipment or software. Its applications range from studying alcohol preference in animal models of addiction to sucrose preference in motivational deficits and reward evaluation. This design costs less than $180 CAD to build with decreased cost on each additional device. This design has been successfully tested for accuracy and validated using alcohol preference as an example. The apparatus showed consistency between drinking bouts and volume consumed and is shown to be accurate to ±0.086 ml of the actual volume. This design makes using the two-bottle choice paradigm more accurate, while also making its data more robust and informative while allowing for microstructure analysis of both licking behavior and volume consumed.
Highlights
Two-bottle choice tests are a widely used paradigm in rodents to determine preference between two liquids, with utility for testing animal models of addiction, depression and anhedonia
Appetitive studies looking at caloric intake, drinking behavior in animal models of Contact jkhokhar@uoguelph.ca. 8.Declaration of interest None of the authors in this paper have reported any conflicts of interest. 9.Human and animal rights The experiments outlined in this paper comply with the ARRIVE guidelines and were conducted in accordance with the National Institute of Health guide for the care and use of Laboratory animals (8th Edition, NIH Publications revised 2011) as well as the Animal Use Protocol approved by the University of Guelph Animal Care Committee
One will manually measure the volume after a given period at the cost of losing important temporal drinking data. This can be partially solved by using a lickometer – a device that measures the physical act of licking
Summary
Frie and Khokhar addiction, and sucrose water consumption in animal models of depression are just a few of the many behavioral paradigms that require the regular, accurate measures of intake, and would benefit from improved methods of data acquisition. The hardware described in this paper provides the same functionality to that of commercially available lickometers with the unique addition of real-time volumetric sensing to correspond to measured licking bouts, resolving any issues of lickometer inaccuracy at a fraction of the cost These measures are combined into a specialized 3D printed housing that is specific to the two-bottle choice test apparatus, of which no similar product is commercially available. While commercial lickometers require additional boxes/arenas, our design is made to be used in home cages where the rats feel more comfortable This design is a modification of a similar open source two-bottle choice test described by Meaghan Creed in this special issue. Measuring carbohydrate taste preferences in rats to test the hypothesis that rats have separate taste receptors for sugar and starch derived polysaccharides [13]
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