Low-cost solution for rodent home-cage behaviour monitoring

PLoS One. 2019 Aug 2;14(8):e0220751. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0220751. eCollection 2019.

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.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Behavior, Animal / physiology*
  • Circadian Rhythm / physiology*
  • Electromyography
  • Hippocampus / physiology
  • Housing, Animal*
  • Mice
  • Sleep / physiology
  • Video Recording
  • Wakefulness / physiology

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant #40352 and #RGPIN-2017-03857 (MHM), Campus Alberta for Innovation Program Chair, Alberta Alzheimer Research Program, Alzheimer Society of Canada (MHM), NSERC Discovery Grant and Alberta Neuroscience Program Grant (RJS). Some of the authors (EBC, MHM, and RJS) have a financial interest in the company “NeuroCage Systems Inc.” that is developing a product “Homecage Monitoring System” whose initial design was inspired by the results presented in this work. The funders and this company had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.