Acceleration of irregular estrous cycle in forced running by midbrain raphe lesions in female rats

Habituation Training Improves Locomotor Performance in a Forced Running Wheel System in Rats

“…However, others works that implement pretraining sessions do not report the training load details of the protocol employed, such us duration, speed or number of sessions; but reported a maximum speed of 21 m/min (O’Dell et al, 2007; Hu et al, 2010; Kennard and Woodruff-Pak, 2012). Finally, only few studies indicate all the detailed features of the habituation protocol developed; reaching the highest speed (30 m/min; Auriat et al, 2006; Shimizu and Yamanouchi, 2011; Wang et al, 2013; Chen et al, 2014). According to Chen et al (2014), running behavior in motor wheels for rodents is more laborious than the linear motion of the treadmill, in particular in the absence of an adaptive learning stage.…”

“…While such an approach has its advantages, both the intensity and volume varies significantly from subject to subject due to the “voluntary” nature of the experimental design (van Praag et al, 2005; Kregel et al, 2006; Leasure and Jones, 2008; Creer et al, 2010; Kobilo et al, 2011; Marlatt et al, 2012). One way to overcome these challenges is to implement a forced running-wheel protocol in which the same training load is applied to all subjects (Auriat et al, 2006; Shimizu and Yamanouchi, 2011; Wang et al, 2013; Chen et al, 2014). It becomes clear from these studies that the inclusion of a pretraining stage of habituation prior to the testing phase is a crucial step to achieving better performances in response to increasing running demands (Dick, 2007).…”