A Selective Look at Some Pre-Skinnerian Cumulative Recording Systems and Cumulative Records in Physiology and Psychology

Todd, James T.

doi:10.5514/rmac.v43.i2.62310

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 49 publications

(73 reference statements)

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“…The aspiration to obtain cumulative records of laboratory animal behaviors in a "non-intrusive home-cage like style" dates back more than a century (for an historical re-collection see 33 ) but was until recently restricted to a limited set of tools like the running wheel integrated in the home cage (served critically for the understanding of the circadian rhythm in small rodents). Over the past few years a number of techniques 3,7,[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46] have become available for automated non-intrusive 24/7 monitoring of in-cage activity 47 of single housed 7,35,40,44 and group housed 8,34,36,37,43,45,48,49 small rodents.…”

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confidence: 99%

Major oscillations in spontaneous home-cage activity in C57BL/6 mice housed under constant conditions

Pernold

Rullman

Ulfhake

2021

Sci Rep

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The mouse is the most important mammalian model in life science research and the behavior of the mouse is a key read-out of experimental interventions and genetic manipulations. To serve this purpose a solid understanding of the mouse normal behavior is a prerequisite. Using 14–19 months of cumulative 24/7 home-cage activity recorded with a non-intrusive technique, evidence is here provided for a highly significant circannual oscillation in spontaneous activity (1–2 SD of the mean, on average 65% higher during peak of highs than lows; P = 7E−50) of male and female C57BL/6 mice held under constant conditions. The periodicity of this hitherto not recognized oscillation is in the range of 2–4 months (average estimate was 97 days across cohorts of cages). It off-sets responses to environmental stimuli and co-varies with the feeding behavior but does not significantly alter the preference for being active during the dark hours. The absence of coordination of this rhythmicity between cages with mice or seasons of the year suggest that the oscillation of physical activity is generated by a free-running intrinsic oscillator devoid of external timer. Due to the magnitude of this rhythmic variation it may be a serious confounder in experiments on mice if left unrecognized.

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confidence: 99%

Major oscillations in spontaneous home-cage activity in C57BL/6 mice housed under constant conditions

Pernold

Rullman

Ulfhake

2021

Sci Rep

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“…In cooperation with the DVC team at Tecniplast, CST activations was extracted from the raw data by taking the average of two consecutive capacitance readings and calculate the difference with the average of the following two readings (two windows, W2) and compared the absolute value of the capacitance change to the lowest possible threshold (λ) that did not pass-through noise generated in empty cages as activity (λ = 1.25). The output is binary from the comparison of successive samples, either an electrode is activated (1) or not (0). The method has previously been validated against CCD-tracking [16].…”

Section: Rest and Physical Activity (Pa) Derived From Ead Of Single-h...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Traditionally, behaviours of laboratory mice have been assessed by snapshots of home cage behaviours or out-of-cage (and everyday life context) testing, these approaches may not substitute well for cumulative unsupervised monitoring of spontaneous behaviours and their alterations over time. Efforts to solve these shortcomings dates more than a century back [ 1 ], however, due to technical obstacles it was not until the late 20 th century that such systems evolved (e.g. [ 2 , 3 ]) and later became commercially available (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bouts of rest and physical activity in C57BL/6J mice

2023

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The objective was to exploit the raw data output from a scalable home cage (type IIL IVC) monitoring (HCM) system (DVC®), to characterize pattern of undisrupted rest and physical activity (PA) of C57BL/6J mice. The system’s tracking algorithm show that mice in isolation spend 67% of the time in bouts of long rest (≥40s). Sixteen percent is physical activity (PA), split between local movements (6%) and locomotion (10%). Decomposition revealed that a day contains ˜7100 discrete bouts of short and long rest, local and locomotor movements. Mice travel ˜330m per day, mainly during the dark hours, while travelling speed is similar through the light-dark cycle. Locomotor bouts are usually <0.2m and <1% are >1m. Tracking revealed also fits of abnormal behaviour. The starting positions of the bouts showed no preference for the rear over the front of the cage floor, while there was a strong bias for the peripheral (75%) over the central floor area. The composition of bouts has a characteristic circadian pattern, however, intrusive husbandry routines increased bout fragmentation by ˜40%. Extracting electrode activations density (EAD) from the raw data yielded results close to those obtained with the tracking algorithm, with 81% of time in rest (<1 EAD s-1) and 19% in PA. Periods ≥40 s of file when no movement occurs and there is no EAD may correspond to periods of sleep (˜59% of file time). We confirm that EAD correlates closely with movement distance (rs>0.95) and the data agreed in ˜97% of the file time. Thus, albeit EAD being less informative it may serve as a proxy for PA and rest, enabling monitoring group housed mice. The data show that increasing density from one female to two males, and further to three male or female mice had the same effect size on EAD (˜2). In contrast, the EAD deviated significantly from this stepwise increase with 4 mice per cage, suggesting a crowdedness stress inducing sex specific adaptations. We conclude that informative metrics on rest and PA can be automatically extracted from the raw data flow in near-real time (< 1 hrs). As discussed, these metrics relay useful longitudinal information to those that use or care for the animals.

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“…Traditionally, behaviours of laboratory mice have been assessed by snapshots of home cage behaviours or out-of-cage (and everyday life context) testing, these approaches may not substitute well for cumulative unsupervised monitoring of behavioural alteration over time. Efforts to solve this shortcomings dates more than a century back[1], however, due to technical obstacles it was not until the late 20 th century that such systems evolved (e.g. [2, 3]) and later became commercially available (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bouts of rest and physical activity in C57BL/6J mice

Pernold¹,

Rullman²,

Ulfhake³

2023

Preprint

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The objective was to exploit the raw data output from a scalable home cage (type IIL IVC) monitoring (HCM) system (DVC®), to characterize pattern of undisrupted rest and physical activity (PA) of C57BL/6J mice. The system's tracking algorithm show that mice in isolation spend 67% of the time in bouts of long rest (>=40s) and 59 % of the time was interpreted as sleep. Twenty percent is physical activity (PA), split equally between local movements and locomotion. Decomposition revealed that a day contains ~6500 discrete bouts of short and long rest, local and locomotor movements. Mice travel ~330m per day, mainly during the dark hours, while travelling speed is similar through the light-dark cycle. Locomotor bouts are usually <0.2m and <1% are >1m. Tracking revealed also fits of abnormal behaviour. The starting positions of the bouts showed no preference for the rear over the front of the cage floor, while there was a strong bias for the peripheral (75%) over the central floor area. The composition of bouts has a characteristic circadian pattern, however, intrusive husbandry routines increased bout fragmentation by ~40%. Extracting electrode activations density (EAD) from the raw data yielded results close to those obtained with the tracking algorithm, with 59% of time in long rest (<1 EAD s-1) and 20% in PA. We confirm that EAD correlates closely with movement distance (rs>0.95) and the data agreed in ~96% of the file time. Thus, albeit EAD being less informative it may serve as a proxy for PA and rest, enabling monitoring group housed mice. The data show that a change in housing density from one to two, and up to three mice had the same effect size on EAD (~2) with no difference between sexes. The EAD deviated significantly from this stepwise increase with 4 mice per cage, suggesting a crowdedness stress inducing sex specific adaptations. We conclude that informative metrics on rest and PA can be automatically extracted from the raw data flow in near-real time (< 1 hrs). These metrics relay useful longitudinal information to those that use or care for the animals.

show abstract

A Selective Look at Some Pre-Skinnerian Cumulative Recording Systems and Cumulative Records in Physiology and Psychology

Cited by 4 publications

References 49 publications

Major oscillations in spontaneous home-cage activity in C57BL/6 mice housed under constant conditions

Major oscillations in spontaneous home-cage activity in C57BL/6 mice housed under constant conditions

Bouts of rest and physical activity in C57BL/6J mice

Bouts of rest and physical activity in C57BL/6J mice

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