Behavior is movement only but how to interpret it? Problems and pitfalls in translational neuroscience—a 40-year experience

Lipp, Hans‐Peter; Wolfer, David P

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2022.958067

Cited by 5 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 143 publications

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“…Locomotor tests in laboratory rodents are part of experimental routine worldwide. One of the basic ways to observe animals' behavior is to track their movements [54]. Since motion tracking software became available, animal locomotion has been digitized routinely.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two modes in the velocity statistics in cautious walks of laboratory rodents

Midzyanovskaya,

Rebik,

Idzhilova

et al. 2024

Preprint

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We have analyzed a large number of rodent tracks in open-field tests, in order to elucidate the statistics of their velocities. We found that the probability distribution of the absolute velocity of rodents can be approximated by a superposition of two Rayleigh distributions, with distinct characteristic velocities v1 and v2 with v1 < v2; this is in contrast to the single Rayleigh distribution for the velocity of a Brownian particle executing 2D random motion. We propose that the part of the distribution near the larger velocity, v2, characterizes rodents' progressions in space, while the part near v1 describes other types of motion, such as lingering and body micromovements. We observed that the animals switched randomly between these two modes. While both velocities, v1 and v2, increase with age, their ratio, v2/v1, also grows with age, implying an increased efficacy of switches between the two modes in older animals. Since the existence of the modes is observed both in pre- weaned, blind pups and in older animals, it cannot be ascribed to foraging, but instead reflects risk assessment and proactive inhibition. We called such motion "cautious walks". Statistical analysis of the data further revealed a biphasic decline in the velocity auto-correlation function, with two characteristic times, ts < tl, where ts characterizes the width of velocity peaks, and tl is associated with the timing of the switches between progression and lingering. To describe the motion, we propose a stochastic model, which assumes the existence of two interfering processes: impulses to move that arrive at random times, and continuous deceleration. Its 2D Langevin-like equation has a damping coefficient that switches between two values, representing mode switching in rodents. Techniques developed here may be applicable for locomotion studies in a wide variety of contexts, as long as tracking data of sufficient resolution are available.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two modes in the velocity statistics in cautious walks of laboratory rodents

Midzyanovskaya,

Rebik,

Idzhilova

et al. 2024

Preprint

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“…Behavioral flexibility denotes the ability of animals and humans to adapt their ongoing behavior when facing environmental changes ( Figure 8C ). It does not only include a cognitive component but also various parallel adaptations of motor and motivational systems, which ultimately result in a decision whether an ongoing motor activity is maintained or changed ( Lipp and Wolfer, 2022 ). Because of such multi-level processing, it is unsurprising that impairment of many brain systems leads to gross or subtle impairment of behavioral flexibility, which is not easily analyzed.…”

Section: Review Bodymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the MWM mice must suppress inappropriate search strategies even when the position of the hidden platform is known ( Lipp and Wolfer, 1998 ). Probe trials do demonstrate that mice have developed a spatial memory, but the usual scores only show how insistently they search over the old platform position ( Wolfer et al, 1998 ), while impaired spatial reversal learning in the water maze is the most distinct behavioral sign after chronic hippocampal lesions ( Lipp and Wolfer, 2022 ). Likewise, in the IntelliCage, learning the spatial position of the corners is rather fast, both by reward or by punishment, and treatment-dependent effects become visible mostly after positional changes, that is spatial reversal learning.…”

Section: Review Bodymentioning

confidence: 99%

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IntelliCage: the development and perspectives of a mouse- and user-friendly automated behavioral test system

Lipp,

Krackow,

Turkes

et al. 2024

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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IntelliCage for mice is a rodent home-cage equipped with four corner structures harboring symmetrical double panels for operant conditioning at each of the two sides, either by reward (access to water) or by aversion (non-painful stimuli: air-puffs, LED lights). Corner visits, nose-pokes and actual licks at bottle-nipples are recorded individually using subcutaneously implanted transponders for RFID identification of up to 16 adult mice housed in the same home-cage. This allows for recording individual in-cage activity of mice and applying reward/punishment operant conditioning schemes in corners using workflows designed on a versatile graphic user interface. IntelliCage development had four roots: (i) dissatisfaction with standard approaches for analyzing mouse behavior, including standardization and reproducibility issues, (ii) response to handling and housing animal welfare issues, (iii) the increasing number of mouse models had produced a high work burden on classic manual behavioral phenotyping of single mice. and (iv), studies of transponder-chipped mice in outdoor settings revealed clear genetic behavioral differences in mouse models corresponding to those observed by classic testing in the laboratory. The latter observations were important for the development of home-cage testing in social groups, because they contradicted the traditional belief that animals must be tested under social isolation to prevent disturbance by other group members. The use of IntelliCages reduced indeed the amount of classic testing remarkably, while its flexibility was proved in a wide range of applications worldwide including transcontinental parallel testing. Essentially, two lines of testing emerged: sophisticated analysis of spontaneous behavior in the IntelliCage for screening of new genetic models, and hypothesis testing in many fields of behavioral neuroscience. Upcoming developments of the IntelliCage aim at improved stimulus presentation in the learning corners and videotracking of social interactions within the IntelliCage. Its main advantages are (i) that mice live in social context and are not stressfully handled for experiments, (ii) that studies are not restricted in time and can run in absence of humans, (iii) that it increases reproducibility of behavioral phenotyping worldwide, and (iv) that the industrial standardization of the cage permits retrospective data analysis with new statistical tools even after many years.

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“…The shortcomings of dis-embodied models of cognition have been recognized in the field and are, as such, not controversial. Examples are the modern understanding of motion as sensory-motor integration [36], the emphasis on complex, ecologically valid scenarios in behavioral studies [6,24] or the focus on active sensing [1]. While these approaches emphasize interactions between the organism and its environment, another line of research analyses interactions within the organism.…”

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confidence: 99%