Micturition video thermography in awake, behaving mice

Verstegen, Anne M.J.; Tish, Margaret M.; Szczepanik, Luca P.; Zeidel, Mark L.; Geerling, Joel C.

doi:10.1016/j.jneumeth.2019.108449

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Mouse urine marking has previously been studied by capturing snapshots of marking patterns. More recently, thermal recording has been used to detect the voiding of urine in non-social contexts 5,13,[30][31][32][33] . Urine leaves the body hot (close to body temperature) and quickly cools below the ambient substrate temperature, providing a distinctive thermal signature.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic changes to signal allocation rules in response to variable social environments in house mice

et al. 2023

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Urine marking is central to mouse social behavior. Males use depletable and costly urine marks in intrasexual competition and mate attraction. We investigate how males alter signaling decisions across variable social landscapes using thermal imaging to capture spatiotemporal marking data. Thermal recording reveals fine-scale adjustments in urinary motor patterns in response to competition and social odors. Males demonstrate striking winner-loser effects in scent mark allocation effort and timing. Competitive experience primes temporal features of marking and modulates responses to scent familiarity. Males adjust signaling effort, mark latency, and marking rhythm, depending on the scent identities in the environment. Notably, recent contest outcome affects how males respond to familiar and unfamiliar urine. Winners increase marking effort toward unfamiliar relative to familiar male scents, whereas losers reduce marking effort to unfamiliar but increase to familiar rival scents. All males adjust their scent mark timing after a contest regardless of fight outcome, and deposit marks in more rapid bursts during marking bouts. In contrast to this dynamism, initial signal investment predicts aspects of scent marking days later, revealing the possibility of alternative marking strategies among competitive males. These data show that mice flexibly update their signaling decisions in response to changing social landscapes.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic changes to signal allocation rules in response to variable social environments in house mice

et al. 2023

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“…Such methods can only provide information on the cumulative output of voiding behavior, like void numbers, volume, and spatial distribution. However, these methods are incapable of detecting the exact time of each void and differentiating between two overlapping voids, and are poorly suited for combined analysis of other time-sensitive methods, like brain activity [ 206 , 207 ]. In contrast, thermal imaging offers a promising solution to such limitations, due to the ability to detect voiding events on the basis of the distinctive thermal signature of urine, namely how freshly deposited urine is close to body temperature and then cools down below ambient substrate temperature.…”

Section: A Multidimensional Approach For Phenotyping Social Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the three-chamber test: toward a multimodal and objective assessment of social behavior in rodents

2022

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Main In recent years, substantial advances in social neuroscience have been realized, including the generation of numerous rodent models of autism spectrum disorder. Still, it can be argued that those methods currently being used to analyze animal social behavior create a bottleneck that significantly slows down progress in this field. Indeed, the bulk of research still relies on a small number of simple behavioral paradigms, the results of which are assessed without considering behavioral dynamics. Moreover, only few variables are examined in each paradigm, thus overlooking a significant portion of the complexity that characterizes social interaction between two conspecifics, subsequently hindering our understanding of the neural mechanisms governing different aspects of social behavior. We further demonstrate these constraints by discussing the most commonly used paradigm for assessing rodent social behavior, the three-chamber test. We also point to the fact that although emotions greatly influence human social behavior, we lack reliable means for assessing the emotional state of animals during social tasks. As such, we also discuss current evidence supporting the existence of pro-social emotions and emotional cognition in animal models. We further suggest that adequate social behavior analysis requires a novel multimodal approach that employs automated and simultaneous measurements of multiple behavioral and physiological variables at high temporal resolution in socially interacting animals. We accordingly describe several computerized systems and computational tools for acquiring and analyzing such measurements. Finally, we address several behavioral and physiological variables that can be used to assess socio-emotional states in animal models and thus elucidate intricacies of social behavior so as to attain deeper insight into the brain mechanisms that mediate such behaviors. Conclusions In summary, we suggest that combining automated multimodal measurements with machine-learning algorithms will help define socio-emotional states and determine their dynamics during various types of social tasks, thus enabling a more thorough understanding of the complexity of social behavior.

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“…Recently, Dalghi et al (2023) used a setup that includes filter paper on the arena floor, UV light, several cameras, and a manual video annotation to get the time of urination events. Several other studies Verstegen et al (2020); Miller et al (2023a) used infrared (IR) cameras for urine detection, as urine is deposited in body temperature and can be seen in the thermal image. However, fecal deposits are also emitted in body temperature, making it difficult to distinguish between feces and small urine deposits using thermal imaging.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

DeePosit: an AI-based tool for detecting mouse urine and fecal depositions from thermal video clips of behavioral experiments

Peles,

Netser,

Ray

et al. 2024

Preprint

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In many mammals, including rodents, social interaction is accompanied by active urination, also known as micturition, for spatial scent marking. Urine and fecal deposits were shown to contain multiple chemosensory cues carrying information regarding the identity, strain, and social rank, as well as the physiological and hormonal conditions of the individual. Moreover, scent marking was shown to be social context-, state-, and experience-dependent. Thus, analyzing scent-marking activity during social interactions may contribute to understanding the structure of mammalian social interactions in health and disease. So far, however, such analysis faced multiple technical obstacles. Mainly, the commonly used void spot assay relies on detecting urine traces left over a filter paper on which the social interaction occurred; thus, it lacks temporal information and is prone to artifacts such as urine smearing. Recently, several studies employed thermal imaging for spatiotemporal analysis of scent marking, as urine and feces are deposited at body temperature and get rapidly cold afterward. This analysis, however, was done so far manually, which made it time-consuming and prone to bias by the observer. Here, we combine thermal imaging, computer vision tools, and an open-source algorithm incorporating a transformer-based video classifier to automatically detect and classify urine and fecal deposits made by male and female mice during several social behavior tests. We found distinct dynamics for urine and fecal depositions in a test- and sex-dependent manner, suggesting two distinct processes of scent marking in mice. The method and tools presented here allow researchers an easy, efficient, and unbiased spatiotemporal analysis of scent marking during behavioral experiments.

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Micturition video thermography in awake, behaving mice

Cited by 10 publications

References 18 publications

Dynamic changes to signal allocation rules in response to variable social environments in house mice

Dynamic changes to signal allocation rules in response to variable social environments in house mice

Beyond the three-chamber test: toward a multimodal and objective assessment of social behavior in rodents

DeePosit: an AI-based tool for detecting mouse urine and fecal depositions from thermal video clips of behavioral experiments

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