Temporal patterns analysis of rat behavior in hole-board

Characterization of exploratory activity and learning ability of healthy and “schizophrenia-like” rats in a square corridor system (AMBITUS)

“…Several methods are available to determine the learning ability of rodents during relatively short time period and/or repeated short trials, including novel object recognition, hole-board, and several mazes, e.g., Y maze, T maze, Morris Water maze, Barnes maze, or radial mazes with different number of arms (Casarrubea, Sorbera, Magnusson, & Crescimanno, 2010;Xu et al, 2013;Chambon, Wegener, Gravius, & Danysz, 2011;Petrovszki et al, 2013;Fitzgerald et al, 1985;Chrobal et al, 1987;Gordan et al, 2012;Locklear & Kritzer, 2014;McLean, Woolley, & Neill, 2009;van der Staay, Gieling, Pinzón, Nordquist, & Ohl, 2012;Vorhees & Williams, 2014;Roof & Stein, 2001;Vorhees & Williams, 2014). Other, more sophisticated methods, such as tasks with touch screen or lever press, require very intensive and long-lasting learning sessions (Brown et al, 2012;Chen, Wong, Chapman, & Pemberton, 2009;de Bruin et al, 2013;Dunnett, Fuller, Rosser, & Brooks, 2012;Nemeth et al, 2002;Preissmann et al, 2011;Sabbagh, Heaney, Bolton, Murtishaw, & Kinney, 2012;Bussey et al, 2008;George, RodriguezSantiago, Riley, & Abelson, 2015).…”

T-pattern analysis for the study of temporal structure of animal and human behavior: A comprehensive review

“…Lyon et al (1994) studied the importance of temporal structure in analyzing schizophrenic behavior comparing outpatient schizophrenics to normal control subjects. Their results revealed Casarrubea et al (2010Casarrubea et al ( , 2011Casarrubea et al ( , 2013aCasarrubea et al ( ,b, 2014 (2010) and Agliati et al (2006a) that response of schizophrenic outpatients, in comparison to control subjects, had a larger number of significant temporal patterns, an increase in different types of patterns and more branching (connectivity) of patterns at a higher level. The latter indicates a higher degree of internal structure.…”

“…Magnusson, in another paper (Magnusson, 1989), illustrated that non-cyclical behaviors may form highly cyclical T-patterns and a doctoral thesis implicating T-pattern analysis of mouse behavior (Feron, 1992) has been produced. This research and development has always been carried out in the context of empirical behavior research in collaboration with researchers in different university laboratories in the USA and Europe Grammer et al, 1998;Filiatre, 1986;Montagner et al, 1990;Casagrande, 1995;Castañer et al, 2009Castañer et al, , 2010aNicol et al, 2005Nicol et al, , 2014Casarrubea et al, 2009Casarrubea et al, , 2010Casarrubea et al, , 2011Casarrubea et al, 2013aCasarrubea et al, ,b, 2014Burgoon et al, 2014a,b;Sandman et al, 2012). However, beside specific results of each research, when a T-pattern is detected three pivotal questions do arise: what a t-pattern is, why does it exist and, last but not least, what does it mean.…”

“…During the following years, these authors applied T-pattern analysis to study anxiety and anxiety-related behavior in rats tested in the hole-board and elevated plus maze (EPM). Results showed that the behavior of the rats, in the hole-board (Casarrubea et al, 2010) and in the EPM (Casarrubea et al, 2013a), is organized on the basis of events which occur sequentially and with statistically significant constraints on the interval length separating them. Importantly, the administration of anxiety modulators, such as diazepam, has been found to significantly modify the comprehensive temporal organization of the behavior in the hole board apparatus (Casarrubea et al, 2011).…”

“…1b and c, could be impossible owing to the enormous amount of space required. For these reasons the authors have developed the representation of T-patterns by means of behavioral stripes, that is, the illustration of the onset of each T-pattern, along the x-axis, by means of vertical marks (Casarrubea et al, 2010(Casarrubea et al, , 2011(Casarrubea et al, , 2013a(Casarrubea et al, ,b, 2014. The authors also suggest that, to provide information concerning the structure of the patterns, each stripe should be partnered with a table reporting all the terminal strings of the patterns represented in stripes.…”