Behavioral Testing - Science topic

Thank you

The type of hot-plate that I used (for mice) in 1990-2010... was always cooler at the edges. We used a temperature probe to test the temperature across the whole surface of the hotplate: it was very even within a certain radius of the centre, so we marked the perimeter with permanent marker pen, and found a glass cylinder with a slightly smaller diameter than this, that was too high for the mice to climb out of. When we needed to remove the animals off the hotplate quickly, we simply lifted the glass cylinder and gently 'swept' the animal off the hotplate, onto the bench or a suitable receptacle, prior to transfer back into their cage(s). We only scored a response by a hind foot, as they tended to rear up with their front paws, against any vertical surfaces, but we were not allowed to leave them on the hotplate for longer than 30 seconds, so tended to record ≥25" or ≥28", rather than risk exceeding the Home Office Regulations that were in force at that time.

Hi Jens, this might not be relevant to you anymore, but maybe someone else can benefit from my experience.

I have achieved very good results with my rats by using a punishment. If the rats jump off, I will spray a good amount of water on them with a simple spray bottle. One day before experiment I have habituated them to the set up and the punishment until they were staying on the rod at the lowest speed for one minutes for 3 times in a row. From the first day of experiment they were cooperative and most of the times really falling rather than jumping off.

Dear Shi Li If you are testing the rats on a skillful task such as reaching and grasping, it is wiser to allow them to be in the testing chamber or arena for few minutes before you conduct the data collection. If the task is as stereotypical as walking overground, you may get away with habituating them once in the starting of the study.

Yes, rats do get bored if engaged in a same task for longer period, especially if the task is award based and they are failing again and again in getting the reward. They will just stop performing and shun themselves. In our lab, we give a break of few minutes after waiting them to perform for max 10 minutes and put the rats back in their cage. They generally perform second testing.

Hope that helped.

Nice Dear Michael Uebel

I agree. But checking for variations should be.

Sorry, I missed the rest of the list! For rotarod, see Rustay et al., PNAS 2003, 100(5):2917-2922.

www.pnas.orgcgidoi10.1073pnas.0437273100

These are also posted in Mouse Phenome Database.

As @Melinda Peters mentions, the parameters used for rotarod matter a lot, and so does the apparatus itself. This paper explored both accelerated and fixed speed rotarod procedures, in the context of ethanol intoxication vs. baseline and genetic strain differences, another important "parameter." We have found that the diameter of the rotarod matters a lot, and for mice, you can eliminate most of the "riding" behavior if you use a dowel size of 6.5 cm diameter covered with a uniform finish of 320 grit wet-dry sandpaper, with a carefully matched seam, because if the mouse can catch a toe in it, it will ride around and around, which delays latency to fall.

Like Shen-An Hwang suggested, you could use the human blood protocols (one linked below). 10-100 ng/mL is usually more than sufficient. TNF levels are highest at around 6 hours and then tend to go down while other cytokines go up until 24 hours. Whenever we did in vivo LPS assays, we measured cytokines at 6 hours post LPS injection.

ovariectomized females to eliminate the cycle effect?

Hi Stephen,

We usually run Barnes maze with mice (20 hole set up) (Basaure et al., 2016; Peris-Sampedro et al., 2015). Note that the number of holes will depend on the diameter of the maze you use. During the training period, our mice are subjected to a daily session of two trials (180 s/trial) with an inter-trial interval (ITI) of 60 min for 5 consecutive days. We typically evaluate retention of the task by a probe trial performed 24 h after the last training session, consisting of a 120-s free exploration session without the escape box. Several authors have inquired about the effects of the training duration and/or the ITI length on acquiring hippocampus-dependent taks. The less massive learning (i.e., longer ITI), the better scores you will obtain from the retention analysis. 

I hope I've been helpful,

Fiona

Yikes !!! This is going to be hell on the fish !!!  See:

"Because it contains free iodine, Lugol's solution at 2% or 5% concentration without dilution is irritating and destructive to mucosa, such as the lining of the esophagus and stomach."

Do you have an animal ethics approval for this procedure !!!!

Dear Julia, 

check this out: 

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

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.

Okay, thanks for your help!  I am looking at changes in the neuronal calcium sensor 1 and D2 dopamine receptors after a two hour cocaine self administration session

Thanks a lot  Beatrice

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

Hi Khandoker....

Thank you a lot for your sharing. 

Actually, I'm doing a Master thesis with the topic online education. These information and articles are very helpful for me to find the right direction for my thesis. 

May I ask if you are working or doing researchs in this field?

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)

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?

I'm sorry. I completely disagree with the above statement. EPM is supposed to be an intrinsic measure of anxiety, it is nothing like, for example, fear conditioning (in which case I would agree). But using a separate group for these measures can be a waste of the experimenter's time, the PIs money, and most importantly, animal lives which we should take pains to consider in our experimental design. Using a battery of behavioral tests is common practice for these reasons (check the literature), and with the right controls can be carried out effectively. 

Please learn about the experience of other scholars who compared the features of behavioral tests in mice of different lines (as compared with rats). All the best.

NDT methods can be roughly classified in two groups: surface techniques, which are used to identify surface and near surface defects such as cracks and surface porosity, and sub-surface techniques, that can be used to detect defects that lie under the material’s surface. In the first group, the most commonly used techniques are visual and optical testing, magnetic particle testing, liquid penetrant testing and electromagnetic testing. On the other hand, sub-surface techniques include radiography and ultrasonic testing among the most used.

Aside from the aforementioned techniques, which account for well over 90 per cent of the industrial NDT, there is a number of alternative methods each at different levels of technology readiness, such as thermography testing, process compensated resonance testing (PCRT), holography, shearography, alternating current field measurement (ACFM), and laser ultrasound.

A comprehensive description of the principles and applications of at least the classical NDT methods can be found in this reference: S. Ness, C. N. Sherlock, P. O. Moore, and P. McIntire. Nondestructive testing overview. American Society for Nondestructive Testing, 1996.

Jilly -

If you are comparing two means, with continuous data, it is more useful to find a confidence interval around the difference of those two estimated means. You could then see what sample size it takes to obtain a reasonable confidence interval. However, be careful of data quality if it looks like you need too many more observations. - Power analyses are good for learning more than just using a p-value. Many people just use a power analysis to decide on what test to use, but it is better to evaluate your results as shown by following the links attached.

Cheers - Jim 

Agnieszka,

In your case, environmental enrichment would be a confounding variable to your study.   Reynaldo suggests it will be a controlled variable and that might be true but there is no way to tell if it is equally beneficial to animals with damaged brains and animals with normal brains. 

Thanks for all great suggestions! I would determine if they have retinal pathology. I will test their olfactory function and then perform  smell-based memory test. Also I am planning to try fear conditioning with using auditory cue.  

Maybe, the prospect theory could be a useful input for cognitive bias. In Daniel Kahneman's book (Thinking, fast and slow) I found lots of experiments in which cognitive biases have been analyzed.

(I am sorry, maybe I have not answered to your question)

I agree with Tumay, ACC has several different behavioural roles (most of what I'm familiar with is impulsivity) so your task would depend primarily on the function of most interest.

Tools used for assessing school performance in children aged 9-14 years

Looking for Dyslexia

Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test

Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test

Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals

(Subtests of) Woodcock Johnson Psychoeducational Battery—III

(Subtests of) Wechsler Individual Achievement Test

Woodcock Reading Mastery Test

Gray Oral Reading Test

Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing

Test of Word Reading Efficiency

Rapid Automatized Naming Tasks

Peabody Individual Achievement Test

Test of Early Reading Ability

Find more detailed: http://www.ncld.org/parents-child-disabilities/ld-testing/types-learning-disabilities-tests 

Looking for Dyscalculia

(Subtests of) Woodcock Johnson Psychoeducational Battery—III

Wide Range Achievement Test

Key Math Diagnostic Assessment

Test of Mathematical Abilities

(Subtests of) Wechsler Individual Achievement Test

Looking for Dysgraphia

Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Drawing

Berry Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual Motor Integration

Looking for ADHD

Connors Rating Scale

Vanderbilt Assessment Scales

Barklay ADD Rating Scales

Looking for Executive Functioning / Information Processing Deficits

(Subtests of) Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale- V

(Subtests of) Wechsler intelligence Scales for Children or Adults

Children’s Memory Scale

NEPSY Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment—II

Behavior test is the most robust, like Sandra Antonieta Acosta said. Radial arm water maze is very good, but taking time in the beginning.  Trying simple Y-maze or open-field will give some hints after that try complex ones like radial arm water maze

Read through the literature on thigmotaxis.  If you run an open field test, sedate animals will exhibit decreased distance traveled compared to control.  Anxious animals will spend an increased amount of time near the edges of the walls compared to controls. 

Elevated plus maze has been highly regarded for measurement of the efficacy of anxiolytic compounds.  On an elevated plus maze, I would expect sedation to decrease total crossings (open or closed arms) whereas an anxiolytic effect would inicrease the proportion of open arm to closed arm entries.

Animals can feel your temperature even wearing gloves. Gloves are meant to protect you from the animals and also the animals from you. You should just use them. Your friends assume that accustoming to your body temperature will make the assay easier. Plus the whole body smells so much to them that the surface of your hands is just negligible. 

The best way to habituate the animals would be by handling (few minutes would be fine) every day, for few days, at the same time the assay will be performed. 

This link might help:

Here are my thoughts on this, validity is not something that can ever be proven. In the unified light that as outlined by Messick we have to treat validity as a unified construct. Thus we only see facets of validity as we examine data collected from the instrument. Kunn goes a step further and suggests that we can only provide evidence of validity which is developed over multiple studies and through continuously examining the instrument.

I also want an answer for the same question. Currently, I only know morris water maze method to test the working memory. Anyone know if there is any other options? thanks