Use of Colour Coding to Assess the Effects of Haloperidol on Animal Behaviour in the Open Field Test

Abstract

Development of novel approaches to behavioural test data analysis is of considerable importance to fundamental research as well as experimental neuropharmacology. Antipsychotic agents used to treat positive and negative symptoms in schizophrenia are of particular interest to current research. Despite that antipsychotics exert potent effects on animal behaviour in simple behavioural tests, they can be difficult to distinguish from other central nervous system-depressing agents, such as sedatives. In this paper, we propose colour coding of video sequence as a method for the analysis of behavioural pattern structure in rats, using the effects of haloperidol, a typical antipsychotic, in the Open field test, as an example. The study was carried out in outbred albino male rats weighing 250–300 g. 3 min long video sequences of rat behaviour in the Open field were processed using Python and the OpenCV library in the Google Colab 3 environment. Colour coding allowed for the marking up and overlaying in a single frame the present (t = 0), nearest-future (t = 0.33 s), and the less-near-future (t = 1.66 s) location of an animal in the arena. Using the proposed method, we were able to detect specific effects of haloperidol on animal behavioural patterns which are undetectable using conventional behavioural data analysis techniques for this test. The three-timepoint colour coding method we propose proved effective for data analysis and processing, and the results were in accordance with other author’s data, obtained using computerized as well as conventional visualization techniques.