Field guide
Watch closely. Measure kindly.
Tracking anxiety-like behaviour, social choice, memory and zebrafish larvae, with an eye on welfare throughout.
Image: credit
Animals tell us a lot if we watch carefully: how long they hug the wall, which cup they sniff, where they search when the platform has gone. Tracking software turns that watching into numbers that are repeatable and fair across groups.
This guide moves through the main families of tests, anxiety, social, memory and larval zebrafish, with practical tips for each. It finishes with the 3Rs, because good tracking is also a welfare tool: more information per animal, less handling and, sometimes, no animal at all.
Explore
On this site
Reading worry in an open space
How animal behavior tracking measures anxiety-like behaviour in the open field, elevated plus maze and novelty suppressed feeding.
Who's your neighbour? Tracking social choice
Animal behavior tracking for social tests such as three-chamber sociability and social novelty.
Mazes, objects and memory
Animal behavior tracking for learning and memory tests: water maze, Barnes maze, dry maze, object recognition and placement.
Life in a 96-well plate
Animal behavior tracking for zebrafish larvae in 48 or 96 well plates: activity, light-dark responses and screening.
Tracking and the 3Rs
How automated animal behavior tracking supports replacement, reduction and refinement in animal research.
Watch
HVS 6D VR Morris Water Maze: Idealized Environment - Fully Immersive Virtual Reality
The human, virtual version of a classic rodent task, one practical route to replacement in the 3Rs.
Video from the HVS Image channel on YouTube. It's loaded in privacy-enhanced mode and only plays when you press play.
From the journals
Field reports
New studies that watched animals closely. Summaries in our words; originals one click away.
An underactive thyroid chips away at memory in stages
Male Wistar rats were made hypothyroid with propylthiouracil for 6, 10 or 14 weeks. Mood-like changes came first (open-field movement roughly halved at six weeks), object recognition slipped next, and only the 14-week group struggled in the water maze, taking about twice as long to find the platform and spending 40% less time in its quadrant. Hippocampal GLUT4 protein climbed while its mRNA stayed flat, and levothyroxine undid the changes. A tidy reminder that how long a model runs can decide which test catches it.
Read the original at Endokrynologia PolskaSeventeen rat studies, one postmenopausal model, very low certainty
A systematic review pooled 17 studies that combined ovariectomy with D-galactose in rats to mimic postmenopausal Alzheimer's-like change. Fifteen agents were tested, eight repurposed drugs and seven herbal products. Escitalopram, dapagliflozin and lapatinib improved water maze results, and dimethyl fumarate improved Barnes maze results, but the reviewers rate the certainty of evidence as very low.
Read the original at Bioengineer.orgCould sea squirts help ageing brains?
Plasmalogens are fats found in cell membranes that decline with age. Aged female mice given plasmalogens from sea squirts for two months did better in a water maze, kept more synapses, showed calmer microglia and even grew thicker, darker coats. Fun, and firmly mouse-only for now.
Read the original at Free Malaysia Today