Using maternal rescue of pups in a cup to investigate mother-infant interactions in mice/rodents

Esposito, Gianluca; Truzzi, Anna; Yoshida, Shigeo; Ohnishi, Ryuko; Miyazawa, Eri; Kuroda, Kumi O.

doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2019.112081

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Trials had a maximum duration of 100 s after the beep, and when the pup was not retrieved within this time, it was returned to the nest by the experimenter. On PND7-13, since pups had developed more mature motor skills, they were kept from crawling back into the nest by placing them in a cup (Figure 1; 90 mm diameter and 55 mm height) as described by Esposito et al (2019). Per dam, the PRT was repeated six times on PND5, and due to practical limitations four times per dam on PND7-13.…”

Section: Pup Retrieval Test (Prt) Protocolmentioning

confidence: 99%

BAMBI: A new method for automated assessment of bidirectional early-life interaction between maternal behavior and pup vocalization in mouse dam-pup dyads

Winters

Gorssen

Wöhr

et al. 2023

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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Vital early-life dyadic interaction in mice requires a pup to signal its needs adequately, and a dam to recognize and respond to the pup’s cues accurately and timely. Previous research might have missed important biological and/or environmental elements of this complex bidirectional interaction, because it often focused on one dyadic member only. In laboratory rodents, the Pup Retrieval Test (PRT) is the leading procedure to assess pup-directed maternal care. The present study describes BAMBI (Bidirectional Automated Mother-pup Behavioral Interaction test), a novel automated PRT methodology based on synchronous video recording of maternal behavior and audio recording of pup vocalizations, which allows to assess bidirectional dam-pup dyadic interaction. We were able to estimate pup retrieval and pup vocalization parameters accurately in 156 pups from 29 dams on postnatal days (PND) 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13. Moreover, we showed an association between number of emitted USVs and retrieval success, indicating dyadic interdependency and bidirectionality. BAMBI is a promising new automated home-cage behavioral method that can be applied to both basic and preclinical studies investigating complex phenotypes related to early-life social development.

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Section: Pup Retrieval Test (Prt) Protocolmentioning

confidence: 99%