Behavioral Analysis - Science topic

Dear Derek,

There is an option to section the test runs and you can specify how long these segments are. Please refer to 1.21 Segment of Test in the attached handbook. Hope this helps!

I think you have answered your question: "It should be noted that when I plot the data, very very few participants chose yes in response to the neutral and positive images. Almost all yes responses were given in response to the negative images."

This is what you'd expect even in a simple 2x2 design. If the probability of a yes response in the positive condition is very high and the probability very low in the negative condition then the OR could be high as its the ratio of a big probability to a very low one.

This isn't unnatural unless the raw probabilities don't reflect this pattern. (There might still be issues but not from what you described).

Saam prasanth Dheeraj it seems like you are looking for a literature review on patch antennas. There are many such reviews available, please see for example https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=patch+antenna+review+paper&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

"What test would offer insight as to group x condition?"

Only a parametric model can do this. As soon as use ranks (i.e. some kind of "non-parametric analysis") an interaction is not meaningfully interpretable.

There are more important things to consider when analysing an interaction: it makes a difference if you assume that effects are additive or multiplicative. A meaningful interpration also requires that that the observed interaction is not due to ceiling or floor effects.

It's easy to do "some test" and to get "some result", but it is tricky to get a meaningful interpretation. I suggest to collaborate with a statistician.

This is a disturbing question. If you added the parenthesis (with permission) it might be marginally less so.

Although fb /Meta does use analytic data (and algorithms) to drive their ad delivery, they are reducing the availabilty of that data. Even anonymous demographics about page visitors.

I, for one, would never take part in a study that made giving the researchers the authority to monitor my conversations and reactions on Facebook or similar. And would not answer surveys that would 'validate' my responses in such a way.

In my experience the best way to test responses in surveys is to recast questions so that they appear to be different, but when the responses are compared inconsistencies (fibs?) are revealed. That is, I will ask apparently different questions within the mix of questions in the survey, but some of the key questions are effectively and unobviously asked multiple times.

Research assistants are good yardsticks for this. If they don't see the similarities in the questions, but see them clearly in the responses, you've hit the target.

Fadi Thabtah Hi the link you shared seems to not work. It would be great if I could get access to it. Thanks

Dear Vivek Pandey,

Thanks for your suggestions for research topics in the field of behavioral finance. The topics are interesting and developmental. In terms of the behavioral consequences of blockchain integration in financial transactions, interesting research can be carried out on improving the security of transactions.

Thank you very much,

Best wishes,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

Maybe this could be helpful. Is not the same research interest (public procurement) but can to you give some ideas, regarding the context and the nature of the publication:

1) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs40614-019-00201-6

2) https://repositorio.unb.br/handle/10482/23262

Dear Waqas Ali,

Thank you for the link to the scientific publication on the subject: behavioral economics.

Greetings, Have a nice day,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

Latency in MWM refers to the time taken for a mouse to locate the escape platform. It is expected to reduce in a mouse with intact cognitive function and prolonged in condition of cognitive impairment.

Robert Feeney I thank you for your answer. It was very helpful and with loads of useful insight. You said, verbatim ' In my work, I have discovered (and have done more and more exploration of this) that people's willingness to change behavior is correlate to how familiar they are with the subject matter to which the targeted behavior is related.' - Do you, in this case, think that at a micro level, behavior depends upon awareness? I know that it does, but I am interested to know up to what level.

Passenger satisfaction is not guaranteed if the quality of the services that public transit delivers do not result in increased passenger perceptions of value in relation to the fares paid. Therefore, providing passenger-value-oriented quality services is crucial for public transit companies if they are to satisfy their passengers and thus increase re-patronage/word-of-mouth behavior, and consequently customer loyalty.

The PSP is a 100–point single‐item rating scale, subdivided into 10 equal intervals. The ratings are based mainly on the assessment of patient's functioning in four main areas: 1) socially useful activities; 2) personal and social relationships; 3) self‐care; and 4) disturbing and aggressive behaviours. Operational criteria to rate the levels of disabilities have been defined for the above‐mentioned areas. Excellent inter‐rater reliability was also obtained in less educated workers.

Dear Munira Nasiruddin Munira Nasiruddin

Thank you very much for your response

Dear Hazim Al Dilaimy, Aa Ss, Sir Soumitra Kumar Mallick, Thank you very much for participating in this discussion. Thank you for the proposed interesting issues in the field Analysis of the functioning of securities markets?

Thank you very much for the sent suggestions of interesting topics, research issues, etc. related to this issue.

Thank you very much and best regards, Have a nice day,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

You can use only that subscale but you must justify that specific theoretical concept instead of the general variable.

Good question

Hi Andrea, if you have a way of marking each individual tadpole (for example by putting a small coloured marker on them) then I believe DeepLabCut would easily track the individuals. The output is a CSV file with the position of the marker within the frame which you could use to calculate time active.

Good Luck, Carrie

Many thanks for the kind comment...

We study several aspects of moral stress and distress when you are supposed to treat the patient in a way that compromise your conscience or you are afraid of eg mental disorders.. I can add some examples:

hope,you already get the answer.

otherwise, you can count the number of customers leaving without being served by using " record " module.

create-- decide -- (true)-- process --dispose

decide (f) -- record(count ) -- dispose 2

in decide module use 2 way by condition using (If queue number <10)

beteendeanalys är gammal och har ersatts av KBT.

Sniffy and CyberRat were the worst and so much slower in terms of literal movement and acquisition than real lab rats. You probably already know about the videos on YouTube that Dale Swartenztruber does--he's got a few on habituation, Pavlovian/classical/respondent conditioning, and operant conditioning.

Jeff Wilson at Albion College was doing Pavlovian conditioning with earthworms as a class project many years ago, but I'm not sure how much progress they made. For something slightly less basic but still Pavlovian conditioning, you could do some evaluative conditioning with fake, neutral product brands but real celebrities and have students rate how likely they are to buy each product in a pre/post design (e.g., rate product without celebrity and then again after "pairing" with the celebrity). For example, Jared+sandwich shop = probably not likely to buy but LeBron James+shoes = probably likely to buy.

Full disclosure: I used a textbook that I contributed to for my Introduction to Psychology class, and we authors included demonstrations that students could work through within the electronic text itself instead of having to generate a bunch of in-class demos (plus, it was an online class).

Agree with Dr@ Mahesh Kumar

Please refer to:

1. Landau, S. and Everitt, B. S.(2004). A Handbook of Statistical analyses using SPSS.

2.Howitt, D. and Cramer, D.(2008). Introduction to SPSS.

Regards,

Zuhair

Hi Nadine,

From what I saw in our lab, this can actually vary from line to line - the effectiveness of the recombination is simply better is in some transgenic lines compared to others. On the other hand, we very rarely see any dropouts during the injection period - of course every now and then a mouse dies but if your injection technique is good exclusion due to injection is extremely rare.

The injection conditions are important though - tamoxifen or hydroxi-tamoxifen, how to dissolve, which dose, how often - so if someone already worked with your Cre-line, try to talk to them, find out what worked best for them. Or in case of doubt. run a couple of pilots.

To address your main question I would definitely analyse the recombination in every mouse after the behavioural tests. If you are testing cognitive abilities, you probably have a promoter that drives Cre expression in the brain. So isolate the brain and run an in situ on your target gene or a Cre immuno. You will then get an idea if you will have to exclude any mice from your behavioural analysis.

Ideally, you would have to test recombination in every batch of tested mice but this is not always feasible especially if you are targeting a small population of cells with a low expressing gene. If this is the case you especially need a robust and reproducible injection protocol that reliably gives you efficient recombination. Otherwise you will have a hard time deciding if a lack of phenotype in a mouse is due to individual variation or unsuccessful recombination.

I hope it helped,

Krisztina

1. Take reference from previous studies for sample size

2. 10 rats/group is sufficient so decide your sample size accordingly

You can find the 'level of change from control' of the parameters for male and female and then compare them using t-tests. This level of change may be expressed as percent change or fold change, for example. A t-test should reveal if there are differences in the 'level of change' for male vs females. This should inform you if the effect you are looking at is more pronounced in one sex compared to the other.

thank you all for the replies! and A. Panis, any special tests you could suggest in R program?

Hi Agnieszka

I used to use the system water in 6hpf, 24hpf, 48hpf and 72hpf. I used to keep those larvae in system water for 7 days. It used to work well. You don't find any morphological changes due to lack of E3 medium.

It all depends on how many days your experiment plan is about.

With regard to solution preparation, I used to face problem of solubility when I directly take the drug and dissolve in 0.5% DMSO. So we used to take the drug into the 100% DMSO and then do serial dilutions. And we used to keep the final DMSO concentration to 0.1%. It used to work.

Hi Jay  

There are many theoretical and practical applications for the behaviour change programs for wildlife conservation and species protection, yet we have to examined practical validity of those application specially in the developing context.   Barrett, C. B., & Arcese, P (1995) have done research about “sustainability of integrated conservation-development projects (ICDPs). On the conservation of large mammals in sub-Saharan Africa”. As they explained “Initiatives to link rural development and species conservation, known as integrated conservation-development projects (ICDPs), have been launched with considerable fanfare and funding around the world. Although ICDPs hold appeal as broader ecological efforts than the conservation and development strategies that preceded them, they also suffer conceptual flaws that may limit their appropriateness and potential sustainability, at least when applied to the protection of large African mammals”. I am sending that research paper for your need, herewith as an attachments

Regards

Dr. Kumara 

Thank you so much for your message and the information provided. Now, I can see that it makes sense to employ a within-subjects design. The findings you report make also much sense to me. As you are going to employ a within-subjects experimental design, my help with the statistical analysis has to be modified. If you are nor an expert in statistics, you will certainly have in your department someone who is a specialist in statistics.

I am sure that you will be able to perform an interesting and valuable research. Good luck for your research.

Best regards. 

You could consider Local Process Models as well. Local Process Models extend sequential pattern mining to include a larger set of constructs, such as loops, choices (inclusive or exclusive), and concurrent blocks.

If I understand the nature of your question, it seems possible that these automated actions are occurring essentially neurologically identically to the automated, and automatic, actions of walking.  As both involve movement and spacial adjustments maybe the brain at some point in the development of driving expertise starts treating them the same.  It would be worth a look anyway.

Testosterone levels tend to fluctuate based on factors such as time of the day and exercise, among others. Generally, its levels will fall within an hour of exercise or other physical exertion; so I believe collecting your sample within 15  to 30 min. of concluding a behavioural test will be more appropriate.

Freezing is a species-specific response to fear, which has been defined as “absence of movement except for respiration.” This may last for seconds to minutes depending on the strength of the aversive stimulus, the number of presentations, and the degree of learning achieved by the subject.

So if you do not see freezing and you are sure that conditioning protool was followed this could be due to 1) The strenght of the aversive stimulus, your animals could be conditioned already to the shock stimulus,or the aversive stimuli is insufficient to induce fear. 2).the number of presentations to this dose of footshock is insufficient to condition fear. 3) your animals are unable the condition to this stimulus.

Thanks Jan..

 Hi Jannis.

I'm working on with gobies (Elacatinus puncticulatus) so i was experiencing a few problems defining the type of interactions between them but after a few papers read and with your answer, everything is more clear.

Yesterday, I read an article where the authors explain courtship in GREY HERON and they describe that the general patron is a combination between "agonistic" and "sexual" behavior.

Moreover, in fishes, there are some postures that indicate if you can consider a behavior pattern as agonistic or courtship (e.g. fin display), additionally you can consider the OSR (ASR), environment (resources) as the primary factors affecting the type of interaction.

Thank you Jannis,

regards

Miguel

Thanks for response .I understand . I think I should use more fish than that I need in case of this situation.

Alan and Antonia, 

Thank you very much for your help! I will check out those resources and hopefully find something useful. 

It is advisable to keep an interval of 24h between the open-field and the MWM. If you can't avoid carrying out the two tests on the same day, then perform the open-field in a session before MWM. Never do the opposite, since the stress induced by the forced swimming in the MWM would affect the anxiety levels in the open-field.

Dear Julia, 

check this out: 

Although I could not envision your task and the apparatus, if you want to counterbalance, I would divide both species into two groups and use the first and the second task in a counterbalanced design. Initially, half of the rats in for each species get test A, while the other half gets B first. Is it not possible to use a completely different test for the same behavior? What is the test, what is the apparatus?

If the planned contrasts do not allow you to discern the differences, then the contrasts don't fit the group differences. You could run the post hoc analyses and report the differences that way. Just be honest that it's post hoc

Hi Gordon and Diogo:

Thank you very much for your comments. I really appreciate your help.

Vijay

Hi,

This paper is perhaps relevant:

C Schneider O Spalt, "Conglomerate investment, skewness, and the CEO long-shot bias", Journal of Finance, 2016, 71, p 635 -671.

Best regards.

Existen dos posibilidades en el trabajo que me ha señalado: a) los ratones que estuvieron bajo el hacinamiento ninguno era dominante, por eso es que no reportan agresión entre ellos, b) los ratones hospedados en el régimen de hacinamiento eran de la misma camada y convivieron durante su crecimiento.

Si quieres eliminar el factor agresión deberías tomar la segunda estrategia, ya que optar por la primera, es temporal no tener agresión, ya que los ratones son jerárquicos y después de un tiempo un macho toma la batuta e intenta dominar mediante la agresión.

Es necesario reflexionar sobre algunos aspectos que pudieran contribuir al la agresión entre los ratones:

1. El sitio donde se colocan las cajas, no deberían estar cerca de cajas con ratones hembra, los olores pudieran estimular más la producción de testosterona en los machos.

2. Los cuidadores y manipuladores de los ratones no deberían usar perfumes o fragancias.

3. Los ratones que forman parte de este experimento, tienen que ser de la misma camada y haber convivido durante su crecimiento previo.

4. En caso de ser de diferente camada, inmediatamente después del destete, los ratones machos los tienen que juntar en cajas grandes de convivencia y crecimiento hasta el momento en donde los asignaras en los distintos grupos.

5. En caso de no seguir estas recomendaciones entonces, lamentablemente tendrás que evaluar dos fuentes de estrés el del hacinamiento y el de la agresividad que ejercerá el dominante. E incluso es posible que el más vulnerable de la caja no llegue al tiempo de 8 semanas, antes puede morir de las lesiones que le propine el más fuerte.

Saludos

Me mantengo en espera de sus comentarios y si en algo más le puedo apoyar estoy a sus ordenes

Alfredo Briones

Thank you. I have already found one of the articles before, but these have been really helpful.

Hi Kolentino!

There is a simple guide, see the link. Basically you need to add a covariate (a possibly confounding variable, e.g. age/gender) and draw a regression line from it onto all other variables that should be controled for the effect of this covariate. I hope the youtube will help.

Good luck with you research!

M.

The same person should do all the experiments to get consistent results.

I suggest you incorporate any behaviour change communication strategies and policies while designing the solutions.

Dear Bumjin! Please evaluate some papers (the text below).

Vladimir

I suppose, the question is: what do you call "disorder". There are many conditions that appear abnormal on tests (abnormal mammograms for e.g.) that dont actually have bad outcomes. Then there is the condition of highly sensitive and lower specificity that picks up conditions that should not be there. Finally you have to consider this in light of the baseline prevalence (or expectation) of the condition and interpret tests accordingly

I would not exclude animals based on an absolute criterion. There are many factors that can affect medium time of interaction as mentioned before, also light, odors..

Exclusion of animals should only be done if they are outside a range of at least 2 standard deviations.

You can do it reflectively as you may get a richer amount data for your measuring the behaviour.

Many thanks,

Debra

First off, I agree with Maria - you need to specify the cognitive domains of interest to your study. You should probably begin with a quick review of the existing literature on the effects of marijuana on cognitive performance - or perhaps I should say, on cognitive performance among marijuana users (because most of this will be essentially correlational).

I think you will find that sustained attention/processing speed and learning/memory will be the "prime suspects," so to speak. The challenge you'll face here is that most tests of these constructs will show clear practice effects. That is, people naturally do better when retested. So you want something with at least two parallel forms. You might consider the RBANS (see link below). Although I don't think it includes multiple forms, the cognition battery from the NIH toolkit is also worth checking out (see link below).

You may be able to find parallel forms of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, the Complex Figure Test, and the Controlled Oral Word Association Test, all of which could be relevant to your work.

Good luck!

Labeling theory leads us to consider that language and cultural rules are not necessarily dependent on underlying social structures or stable systems of meaning, but rather hinge on interaction, as people give names and meanings to the things they encounter. We can then ask ourselves: does this put in jeopardy the role of structuring variables such as class, power or gender, in favor of a textual analysis of social life? Not quite. It is first of all necessary to remind ourselves that these variables do not carry intrinsic value, given that they are contingent on the specific meanings they take in each situation: as abstract entities, they are no more than representations on a given state of the world. To take those categories as a 'given object' of reality, and to situate their activities and cultural productions as expressions of class, status and power 'positions', is a dangerously deterministic and theoretically naive idea. These variables are expressed in a theory of social activity where life is demonstrated in social, cultural and historical fields, associated merely by an 'idea of structure' and not an 'objective' social structure with determined roles. It is the shape of social relations which gives the interpretative character to the categories themselves, stemming from a presumed 'stable system of meaning'. To consider the 'shape of the relation' of importance in the analysis of culture and power is to understand it as not stemming from structuralism bases and power theories.

Also 2 articles from American Journal of Public Health

Hi,

you need to have four groups of participants. Each group receives 1 vignette. You have to have in each group a minimu of 25 people, but better 30+. There is a special software to find out the optimal sample size (http://www.gpower.hhu.de/en.html). It is free to use, but you have to know which analysis you are going to apply (probably ANOVA F-Test, group comparison, 4 groups).

You are not allowed to give to each person two or more vignettes - the results of the second (thrid, fourth) answer might be biased through their previous answer and the overall understanding on what is your research about. Moreover, the induced emotions might change or "overlap".

Remeber, that all your vignettes should be almost identical, apart of the manipulation (1-2 words). This is the only way to exclude all other influencing factors! Do not forget to test for confouning variables like age, current emotional state, and so on.

It is also recommendable to make a pretest of your vignettes on a small sample of participants. If you test for crowding/deception, you can do it with students as well as your main study. You are not able to merge the rpetest and the test, however, since other factors (time of the day, weather, light) might have influence on the answers of participants.

Regards,

Eugene

There are three sets of answers to this question:

1. How will behavioral sciences help you make money as a physician?

Patients are interested in having a doctor that can relate to them. Behavioral Sciences help you understand the doctor patient relationship and its impact on the patient and your practice.

2. Most of the diseases we treat are behavioral in nature. It is extremely important for clinicians to know how to help people change their behavior. Motivational Enhancement Therapy techniques are key.

3. What about psychiatrists? Should they be experts in behavior as well as pharmacology? Yes they should. Due to short sighted financial interests psychiatrists have lost the lead in mental health care delivery. They will soon find themselves hired pill pushers if they lack the capacity to be well rounded clinicians,

I'd question even the basic premise that education is about behavior modification. Unless you define behavior much more broadly than is typical. If you go back to the root word in education  as "drawing out" it is more about self-knowledge than knowledge for behavior change. Even 'learning to do something" would be a more common way to think about education. Certainly no philosopher of liberal education would say that education is about behavior change. If your interest is education, I'd recommend reading more about liberal education, and such books as Parker Palmer's To Know As We Are Known. If your question is really about behavior change, that's an entirely different domain. But I hope you don't imply that education should be about coercion into one particular behavioral path rather than laying out choices that may expose someone's essential character.

According to Perceptual Control Theory (PCT), the major variables affecting behavior are the references that one has (such as goals, principles, homeostatic set points) and one's perceptions related to those references.  When a perception differs from a reference, an error signal is produced.  A neural error signal that is important, including those important to one's survival, results in behavior produced to reduce the error signal.  Such behavior, when it seems to produce desired perceptions (i.e., when error signals are reduced) results in the reorganization of the neural control systems that generated the behavior and tends to occur again in similarly perceived situations.

Variables external to the nervous system influence behavior when they either (a) result in perceptions that produce important error signals or (b) when they may result in important error signals.  An so, we jerk our hand away from a painfully hot object and we don't walk in front of a speeding car. 

Cross-culturally, behavior often differs because our references often differ.  For example, in the USA giving someone something with the left hand is usually OK, but in some other cultures would be considered impolite.  Similarly, in the USA, blowing one's nose in a handkerchief and putting that in your pocket is usually OK, but in some other cultures is disgusting.  Eating dogs is OK in some cultures whereas in others doing so is a revolting idea.  Such differences depend on our references and related perceptions!

For more information about Perceptual Control Theory, a classic but technical textbook is William T. Powers, Behavior: The Control of Perception (1973/2005).  Information online is available at iapct.org (website of the International Association for Perceptual Control Theory).

It depends on your hypothesis. But: I've done this twice in my publications. Once for animal behavioral data, and once for analyzing the proportion of different types of responsive neurons to a drug stimulus (i.e., non-responsive neurons, neurons that showed increased activity in response to stimulus, and neurons that showed decreased activity to a stimulus). In this latter case, in my analyses, I eliminated the non-responders and I did a binomial exact test to see if the proportion of neurons showing an increased response were significantly greater/fewer in proportion to neurons showing a decreased response. 

Behavioral example:

Physiology example: (Attached). 

Hi Raul,

I'm sorry but I couldn't understand what you mean… Can you specify better your question? Do you have questions about the organization of the behaviors in the excel? Or do you have questions in the categorization of the behaviors?

Dear Waleed, 

Check this link out: 

I think Apomorphine can induce such licking behaviour.

Hello,

corticosteroid administration triggers some physiological pathways. First, hyperglycemia: you can measure circulating glucose. It responds to corticosteroid administration after a short time but remains elevated even after corticosteroid clearance. Second, immune response: corticosteroid administration suppress immune function, especially when administered chronically. Thus, you can measure  circulating immune protein (complement system), lysozyme, immunoglobulins, and acute phase proteins. Also, leukocyte related immune functions could be assayed.

They are the main effects of corticosteroid administration. But, corticosteroid administration also can reduce bone formation (long term osteoporosis),

See Sabine Hölter: Assessing Cognition [in mice]

Hi Analisa,

yes, as Vittorio Porciatti wrote, there is a reliable way to do that. It's the Westheimer paradigm (no "r" in Westheimer), and the field size that is measured by it is called the "perceptive field size".Oehler (1985) has even used it with monkeys, and the seminal paper is by Lothar Spillmann. There is a chapter in my review on peripheral vision on it:

(or go to my website, ww.hans.strasburger.de)

If you have 5 different groups of items with 3-4 in each and you want to see if your items measure the same thing in ONe group then you use Cronbachs alpha.= the internal consistent in one special group of items:

a. I am feeling bad, 

b. I feel nausea,

c.  I did not sleep well last night, then you calculate your Cronbach's alpha and these probably measure all that you are depressed or pregnant depending on your question so you get an alpha between .85 to .90.

Then you have another group of questions that measure how happy you are to get a baby. 

I assume you have made sure the hot plate is actually at 45 degrees and that there isnt an issue with the kit. 

There an numerous factors what can affect pain behaviour:

Firstly, have you changed supplier or have the supplier started sending you rats from a different colony? Are you certian they are sending SD rats? Has the constituents of the diet changed? (Seltzer et al saw a significant reduction in neuropathic pain behaviour when soy protein was added to their rat chow without them knowing). Have you changed experimenters, if not have you changed after shave or shampoo? Have there been any changed in animal care staff? Are there any works in the facility or in the surrounding buildings? Stress induced hyperalgesia is as real a problem as stress induced analgesia. The list could go on!

Another point is that over the years I've seen dramatic alteration of pain behaviour over the course of a year with a marked reduction over winter months. I've never had the resource to look into this effect methodically but I'm certain its not an artifact. 

I would suggest looking at secondary analyses from Project MATCH or the COMBINE study. Then look at predictors of percentage of days abstinent (a marker of frequency) and drinks per drinking day.

We recently looked at this in a depressed alcohol dependent sample (Foulds et al, Alcohol and Alcoholism,doi: 10.1093/alcalc/agv122) and found the personality trait novelty seeking predicted more heavy drinking on drinking days. 

Personality measures are probably worth considering for your analyses.

I've seen some strains of mice be resistant to running in a wheel, although generally C57's will start running within minutes. I assume the running wheels you have are specific for mice? The individual rungs of the wheel are spaced closer together for mice than for rats, so getting a mouse to run on a wheel made for rats could be difficult as they'd likely have their feet constantly falling through and in between the rungs. Are these wheels part of a connected system that measures time/speed/distance? If the wheel could be introduced in their homecage, that could facilitate running. If it can't, could the mice be housed in the running wheel cage and thus constantly exposed to the wheel, increasing the chance they may check it out and use it?

if it occurs in the 0.5-1.5 Hz range it might be movement or eye movement artifacts that usually occur around 1 Hz. If you filter out <2Hz and it still is present in the 2-4Hz part of the delta band, you may be on to something. If this is a general finding, you should be able to see it in published data for mice and rats. How sure are you about the scoring off sleep states? Mice do have a lot of scattered sleep during their activity phase at night....