Quantifying the buildup in extent and complexity of free exploration in mice

Abstract

To obtain a perspective on an animal's own functional world, we study its behavior in situations that allow the animal to regulate the growth rate of its behavior and provide us with the opportunity to quantify its moment-by-moment developmental dynamics. Thus, we are able to show that mouse exploratory behavior consists of sequences of repeated motion: iterative processes that increase in extent and complexity, whose presumed function is a systematic active management of input acquired during the exploration of a novel environment. We use this study to demonstrate our approach to quantifying behavior: targeting aspects of behavior that are shown to be actively managed by the animal, and using measures that are discriminative across strains and treatments and replicable across laboratories.

The light spot test: Measuring anxiety in mice in an automated home-cage environment

“…This stands in contrast with administration of most classical tests that are generally timed at the convenience of the experimenter and executed sequentially. Subjecting mice to a task during their natural active phase warrants that the observed response is not confounded with effects of sudden, forced changes in daily routine, which creates a mouse-centered approach [27]. Testing all mice at the same time assures that if circadian rhythm affects the observed response, this effect is at least similar for all mice.…”

Emergent Exploration via Novelty Management

“…Exploration is composed of a sequence of excursions into an environment: whisking in the space around the snout (Deutsch et al, 2012) and locomotion into an approachable arena (Fonio et al, 2009;Benjamini et al, 2011). We show that our model can explain a large repertoire of behaviors, on multiple timescales, and predict novel behaviors.…”

“…3c, middle); and final exploration of the center of the arena (Fig. 3c, right; Fonio et al, 2009;Benjamini et al, 2011). Exploration behavior is interspersed with retreat behavior to the home cage (Fig.…”

“…Upon contact, a larger repertoire of behaviors is observed, such as rapid cessation of protraction upon initial contact (Mitchinson et al, 2007;Grant et al, 2009), touch-induced pumps (Deutsch et al, 2012), and repetitive palpation (Knutsen et al, 2006) accompanied by touch with their snout (Welker, 1964). Freely moving mice exhibit complex exploration behaviors that grow in dimensionality when exploring a novel arena, from circling in place, through wall following to open-space exploration (Fonio et al, 2009;Benjamini et al, 2011). Modeling efforts had been focused so far on specific scenarios (Tchernichovski et al, 1998;Harish and Golomb, 2010) or high-level information theoretical aspects (Polani, 2009;Still, 2009;Friston, 2010;Tishby and Polani, 2011) of these behaviors.…”

What is comparable in comparative cognition?

“…New technologies in motion capture and video analyses make an entirely hypotheses-free approach to the analysis of behaviour feasible [88][89][90].…”