Abstract
BackgroundQualitative and quantitative measurements of motor performance are essential for characterizing perturbations of motor systems. Although several methods exist for analyzing specific motor tasks, few behavioral assays are readily available to researchers that provide a complete set of kinematic parameters in rodents.ResultsHere we present MouseWalker, an integrated hardware and software system that provides a comprehensive and quantitative description of kinematic features in freely walking rodents. Footprints are visualized with high spatial and temporal resolution by a non-invasive optical touch sensor coupled to high-speed imaging. A freely available and open-source software package tracks footprints and body features to generate a comprehensive description of many locomotion features, including static parameters such as footprint position and stance patterns and dynamic parameters, such as step and swing cycle duration, and inter-leg coordination. Using this method, we describe walking by wild-type mice including several previously undescribed parameters. For example, we demonstrate that footprint touchdown occurs instantaneously by the entire paw with no obvious rostral–caudal or lateral–medial bias.ConclusionsThe readily available MouseWalker system and the large set of readouts it generates greatly increases the currently available toolkit for the analysis of wild type and aberrant locomotion in rodents.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12915-015-0154-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Qualitative and quantitative measurements of motor performance are essential for characterizing perturbations of motor systems
A large number of assays have been developed that allow indirect behavioral profiling of motor deficits either by manual qualitative assessments, the automatic quantification of motor activity in an open arena [4], or motor performance tests scoring the execution of a specific motor task
To accommodate the need for an improved method to analyze locomotion in the mouse, we describe a simplified and inexpensive frustrated total internal reflection (fTIR) setup combined with an opensource and user-friendly software package
Summary
Qualitative and quantitative measurements of motor performance are essential for characterizing perturbations of motor systems. Understanding the neuronal mechanisms that control motor behavior, such as locomotion, is one of the major challenges in neuroscience research For this purpose, mice have become an important animal model mainly due to the recent advances in mouse genetics that allow the precise manipulation of the neuronal networks that underlie motor behavior [1, 2]. Mice have become an important animal model mainly due to the recent advances in mouse genetics that allow the precise manipulation of the neuronal networks that underlie motor behavior [1, 2] These advances have resulted in a large number of mutant mice lines that model human diseases that affect motor behavior [3].
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