Designing animal-friendly behavioral tests for neuroscience research: The importance of an ethological approach

d’Isa, Raffaele

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2022.1090248

Cited by 18 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 164 publications

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“…Researchers have recently highlighted the importance of employing animal-friendly tests in behavioral neuroscience, underlining how these tests would improve both animal welfare and validity of scientific results (Voikar and Gaburro, 2020 ; d’Isa and Gerlai, 2023 ). Indeed, infrared thermography could be a very useful tool for animal-friendly studies of cognition and emotion in rodents, which makes it a particularly promising method for behavioral neuroscience.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infrared thermography for non-invasive measurement of social inequality aversion in rodents and potential usefulness for future animal-friendly studies

Watanabe

2023

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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Infrared thermography is a method that detects thermal radiation energy and can measure the body surface temperature of animals from a distance. While rectal temperature has traditionally been used to measure animals’ core temperature, thermal imaging can avoid the stress and potential rise of body temperature deriving from handling of the animals. Additionally, being non-invasive and contactless, thermal imaging allows free movement of the animals. The validity of this technique as a psychophysiological method has been proven in a series of stress-induced hyperthermia (SIH) studies of mice under social inequality conditions. Restraint in a holder elicits SIH in mice. A restrained mouse surrounded by freely moving cage mates displays increased SIH suggesting that social inequality enhances the stress. Social inequality can be examined also in unrestrained mice, in particular through unequal distribution of food. In this protocol, a food-deprived mouse is given a small piece of cheese, while its cage mate is given a large piece of cheese. This inequity causes SIH, suggesting social inequality aversion in mice. Thus, social inequality in different situations similarly increased SIH. Importantly, in future studies infrared thermography could also be used to evaluate emotional arousal states different from stress (for example to assess reactivity to rewards or in social and sexual preference tests). Moreover, the technique could be used to investigate also cognitive arousal induced by novelty. Indeed, infrared thermography could be a particularly useful tool for animal-friendly studies of cognition and emotion in rodents.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infrared thermography for non-invasive measurement of social inequality aversion in rodents and potential usefulness for future animal-friendly studies

Watanabe

2023

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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“…Therefore, the welfare burden on the animals is much lower. Avoidance of stressors deriving from out-of-cage testing, on the one hand, leads to a more animal-friendly behavioral testing and, on the other hand, increases the validity and reproducibility of results (Voikar and Gaburro, 2020 ; d’Isa and Gerlai, 2023 ). Two further advantages of home-cage testing are the possibility to test the animals in a social environment, while they are group-housed, and the possibility to record behaviors outside of the normal observation hours, allowing for continual monitoring of progressive phenotypes over both light and dark cycles and not just at specific time points.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Longitudinal home-cage automated assessment of climbing behavior shows sexual dimorphism and aging-related decrease in C57BL/6J healthy mice and allows early detection of motor impairment in the N171-82Q mouse model of Huntington’s disease

Bains

Forrest

Sillito

et al. 2023

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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Monitoring the activity of mice within their home cage is proving to be a powerful tool for revealing subtle and early-onset phenotypes in mouse models. Video-tracking, in particular, lends itself to automated machine-learning technologies that have the potential to improve the manual annotations carried out by humans. This type of recording and analysis is particularly powerful in objective phenotyping, monitoring behaviors with no experimenter intervention. Automated home-cage testing allows the recording of non-evoked voluntary behaviors, which do not require any contact with the animal or exposure to specialist equipment. By avoiding stress deriving from handling, this approach, on the one hand, increases the welfare of experimental animals and, on the other hand, increases the reliability of results excluding confounding effects of stress on behavior. In this study, we show that the monitoring of climbing on the wire cage lid of a standard individually ventilated cage (IVC) yields reproducible data reflecting complex phenotypes of individual mouse inbred strains and of a widely used model of neurodegeneration, the N171-82Q mouse model of Huntington’s disease (HD). Measurements in the home-cage environment allowed for the collection of comprehensive motor activity data, which revealed sexual dimorphism, daily biphasic changes, and aging-related decrease in healthy C57BL/6J mice. Furthermore, home-cage recording of climbing allowed early detection of motor impairment in the N171-82Q HD mouse model. Integrating cage-floor activity with cage-lid activity (climbing) has the potential to greatly enhance the characterization of mouse strains, detecting early and subtle signs of disease and increasing reproducibility in preclinical studies.

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“…These tasks are based on learning and memorizing the spatial locations of relevant places in the environment ( Ito, 2018 ). Spatial memory tests are ethologically valid, as it reproduces challenges commonly faced in the natural environments of rodent and primates, including humans ( d’Isa and Gerlai, 2022 ). Given that spatial memory is not acquired in a single trial but it requires the repeated exploration of relatively fixed environment, they allow to evaluate memory generalization and strategy progression along the learning process ( Ruediger et al, 2012 ; Richards et al, 2014 ).…”

Section: The Prefrontal Cortex and Cognitive Control Of Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Large-scale coupling of prefrontal activity patterns as a mechanism for cognitive control in health and disease: evidence from rodent models

Negrón-Oyarzo,

Dib,

Chacana-Véliz

et al. 2024

Front. Neural Circuits

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Cognitive control of behavior is crucial for well-being, as allows subject to adapt to changing environments in a goal-directed way. Changes in cognitive control of behavior is observed during cognitive decline in elderly and in pathological mental conditions. Therefore, the recovery of cognitive control may provide a reliable preventive and therapeutic strategy. However, its neural basis is not completely understood. Cognitive control is supported by the prefrontal cortex, structure that integrates relevant information for the appropriate organization of behavior. At neurophysiological level, it is suggested that cognitive control is supported by local and large-scale synchronization of oscillatory activity patterns and neural spiking activity between the prefrontal cortex and distributed neural networks. In this review, we focus mainly on rodent models approaching the neuronal origin of these prefrontal patterns, and the cognitive and behavioral relevance of its coordination with distributed brain systems. We also examine the relationship between cognitive control and neural activity patterns in the prefrontal cortex, and its role in normal cognitive decline and pathological mental conditions. Finally, based on these body of evidence, we propose a common mechanism that may underlie the impaired cognitive control of behavior.

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Designing animal-friendly behavioral tests for neuroscience research: The importance of an ethological approach

Abstract: ) Designing animal-friendly behavioral tests for neuroscience research: The importance of an ethological approach.

Cited by 18 publications

References 164 publications

Infrared thermography for non-invasive measurement of social inequality aversion in rodents and potential usefulness for future animal-friendly studies

Infrared thermography for non-invasive measurement of social inequality aversion in rodents and potential usefulness for future animal-friendly studies

Longitudinal home-cage automated assessment of climbing behavior shows sexual dimorphism and aging-related decrease in C57BL/6J healthy mice and allows early detection of motor impairment in the N171-82Q mouse model of Huntington’s disease

Large-scale coupling of prefrontal activity patterns as a mechanism for cognitive control in health and disease: evidence from rodent models

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