Automated recording of home cage activity and temperature of individual rats housed in social groups: The Rodent Big Brother project

Redfern, William S.; Tse, Karen; Grant, Claire; Keerie, Amy; Simpson, David J.; Pedersen, John C.; Rimmer, Victoria; Leslie, Lauren; Klein, Stéphanie; Karp, Natasha A.; Sillito, Rowland R.; Chartsias, Agis; Lukins, T.C.; Heward, James; Vickers, Catherine; Chapman, Kathryn; Armstrong, J. Douglas

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0181068

Cited by 64 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…In this study, we used locomotion data measured in a familiar OF arena instead of home cage based data. In recent years, home cage RFID-based monitoring has become a promising tool to detect unbiased behavior of rodents in social groups over long periods [46,47]. In fact, it has been shown that home cage activity is repeatable over long periods of time and indicating the emergence of stable individual differences in activity [32].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Repeatability analysis improves the reliability of behavioral data

et al. 2020

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Repeatability analysis improves the reliability of behavioral data

et al. 2020

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“…Reductions in locomotor activity following immunogen challenge can be non-invasively measured in an animals' home cage using specialized recording and monitoring software to verify sickness, compared to vehicletreated control animals. For singly housed animals, specialized cages can measure food and water intake, and body weight change [117], known to be affected by immunogens as part of the inflammatory sickness response [102].…”

Section: Immune Activationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maternal immune activation: reporting guidelines to improve the rigor, reproducibility, and transparency of the model

Kentner

Bilbo

Brown

et al. 2018

Neuropsychopharmacol

189

199

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The 2017 American College of Neuropychopharmacology (ACNP) conference hosted a Study Group on 4 December 2017, Establishing best practice guidelines to improve the rigor, reproducibility, and transparency of the maternal immune activation (MIA) animal model of neurodevelopmental abnormalities. The goals of this session were to (a) evaluate the current literature and establish a consensus on best practices to be implemented in MIA studies, (b) identify remaining research gaps warranting additional data collection and lend to the development of evidence-based best practice design, and (c) inform the MIA research community of these findings. During this session, there was a detailed discussion on the importance of validating immunogen doses and standardizing the general design (e.g., species, immunogenic compound used, housing) of our MIA models both within and across laboratories. The consensus of the study group was that data does not currently exist to support specific evidence-based model selection or methodological recommendations due to lack of consistency in reporting, and that this issue extends to other inflammatory models of neurodevelopmental abnormalities. This launched a call to establish a reporting checklist focusing on validation, implementation, and transparency modeled on the ARRIVE Guidelines and CONSORT (scientific reporting guidelines for animal and clinical research, respectively). Here we provide a summary of the discussions in addition to a suggested checklist of reporting guidelines needed to improve the rigor and reproducibility of this valuable translational model, which can be adapted and applied to other animal models as well.

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“…Commercially available systems (e.g., Noldus, TSE, or Tecniplast) promise to enable an automated home-cage observation to analyze the whole day activity of grouped housed individuals [112][113][114][115]. Some systems are best suited for single cage monitoring, but others are capable of monitoring entire rodent racks, such as the rodent Big Brother Project [116]. However, these systems often lack automated, quantitative, and accurate assessment of social interaction.…”

Section: Automation Of Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Affective State in Laboratory Rodents to Promote Animal Welfare—What Is the Progress in Applied Refinement Research?

Jirkof

Rudeck

Lewejohann

2019

Animals

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An animal’s capacity to suffer is a prerequisite for any animal welfare concern, and the minimization of suffering is a key aim of refinement research. In contrast to the traditional focus on avoiding or reducing negative welfare states, modern animal welfare concepts highlight the importance of promoting positive welfare states in laboratory animals. Reliable assessments of affective states, as well as the knowledge of how to elicit positive affective states, are central to this concept. Important achievements have been made to assess pain and other negative affective states in animals in the last decades, but it is only recently that the neurobiology of positive emotions in humans and animals has been gaining more interest. Thereby, the need for promotion of positive affective states for laboratory animals is gaining more acceptance, and methods allowing the assessment of affective states in animals have been increasingly introduced. In this overview article, we present common and emerging methods to assess affective states in laboratory rodents. We focus on the implementation of these methods into applied refinement research to identify achieved progress as well as the future potential of these tools to improve animal welfare in animal-based research.

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Automated recording of home cage activity and temperature of individual rats housed in social groups: The Rodent Big Brother project

Cited by 64 publications

References 61 publications

Repeatability analysis improves the reliability of behavioral data

Repeatability analysis improves the reliability of behavioral data

Maternal immune activation: reporting guidelines to improve the rigor, reproducibility, and transparency of the model

Assessing Affective State in Laboratory Rodents to Promote Animal Welfare—What Is the Progress in Applied Refinement Research?

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