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bioRxiv · 10.1101/342501

Low-Cost Solution for Rodent Home-Cage Behaviour Monitoring

Singh, S.·Bermudez-Contreras, E.·Nazari, M.·Sutherland, R. J.·Mohajerani, M.
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Abstract

In the current research on measuring complex behaviours/phenotyping in rodents, most of the experimental design requires the experimenter to remove the animal from its home-cage environment and place it in an unfamiliar apparatus (novel environment). This interaction may influence behaviour, general well-being, and the metabolism of the animal, affecting the phenotypic outcome even if the data collection method is automated. Most of the commercially available solutions for home-cage monitoring are expensive and usually lack the flexibility to be incorporated with existing home-cages. Here we present a low-cost solution for monitoring home-cage behaviour of rodents that can be easily incorporated to practically any available rodent home-cage. To demonstrate the use of our system, we reliably predict the sleep/wake state of mice in their home-cage using only video. We validate these results using hippocampal local field potential (LFP) and electromyography (EMG) data. Our approach provides a low-cost flexible methodology for high-throughput studies of sleep, circadian rhythm and rodent behaviour with minimal experimenter interference.

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Singh, S., Bermudez-Contreras, E., Nazari, M., Sutherland, R. J., Mohajerani, M.. 2018-06-08. Low-Cost Solution for Rodent Home-Cage Behaviour Monitoring. https://doi.org/10.1101/342501

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