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Seminatural environments for rodent behavioral testing: a representative design improving animal welfare and enhancing replicability

The low replicability of scientific studies has become an important issue. One possible cause is low representativeness of the experimental design employed. Already in the 1950’s, Egon Brunswick pointed out that experimental setups ideally should be based on a random sample of stimuli from the subje...

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Autores principales: Hernández-Arteaga, Enrique, Ågmo, Anders
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10323197/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37424748
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1192213
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author Hernández-Arteaga, Enrique
Ågmo, Anders
author_facet Hernández-Arteaga, Enrique
Ågmo, Anders
author_sort Hernández-Arteaga, Enrique
collection PubMed
description The low replicability of scientific studies has become an important issue. One possible cause is low representativeness of the experimental design employed. Already in the 1950’s, Egon Brunswick pointed out that experimental setups ideally should be based on a random sample of stimuli from the subjects’ natural environment or at least include basic features of that environment. Only experimental designs satisfying this criterion, representative designs in Brunswikian terminology, can produce results generalizable beyond the procedure used and to situations outside the laboratory. Such external validity is crucial in preclinical drug studies, for example, and should be important for replicability in general. Popular experimental setups in rodent research on non-human animals, like the tail suspension test or the Geller-Seifter procedure, do not correspond to contexts likely to be encountered in the animals’ habitat. Consequently, results obtained in this kind of procedures can be generalized neither to other procedures nor to contexts outside the laboratory. Furthermore, many traditional procedures are incompatible with current notions of animal welfare. An approximation to the natural social and physical context can be provided in the laboratory, in the form of a seminatural environment. In addition to satisfy the basic demands for a representative design, such environments offer a far higher level of animal welfare than the typical small cages. This perspective article will briefly discuss the basic principles of the generalizability of experimental results, the virtues of representative designs and the coincidence of enhanced scientific quality and animal welfare provided by this kind of design.
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spelling pubmed-103231972023-07-07 Seminatural environments for rodent behavioral testing: a representative design improving animal welfare and enhancing replicability Hernández-Arteaga, Enrique Ågmo, Anders Front Behav Neurosci Neuroscience The low replicability of scientific studies has become an important issue. One possible cause is low representativeness of the experimental design employed. Already in the 1950’s, Egon Brunswick pointed out that experimental setups ideally should be based on a random sample of stimuli from the subjects’ natural environment or at least include basic features of that environment. Only experimental designs satisfying this criterion, representative designs in Brunswikian terminology, can produce results generalizable beyond the procedure used and to situations outside the laboratory. Such external validity is crucial in preclinical drug studies, for example, and should be important for replicability in general. Popular experimental setups in rodent research on non-human animals, like the tail suspension test or the Geller-Seifter procedure, do not correspond to contexts likely to be encountered in the animals’ habitat. Consequently, results obtained in this kind of procedures can be generalized neither to other procedures nor to contexts outside the laboratory. Furthermore, many traditional procedures are incompatible with current notions of animal welfare. An approximation to the natural social and physical context can be provided in the laboratory, in the form of a seminatural environment. In addition to satisfy the basic demands for a representative design, such environments offer a far higher level of animal welfare than the typical small cages. This perspective article will briefly discuss the basic principles of the generalizability of experimental results, the virtues of representative designs and the coincidence of enhanced scientific quality and animal welfare provided by this kind of design. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-06-22 /pmc/articles/PMC10323197/ /pubmed/37424748 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1192213 Text en Copyright © 2023 Hernández-Arteaga and Ågmo. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Hernández-Arteaga, Enrique
Ågmo, Anders
Seminatural environments for rodent behavioral testing: a representative design improving animal welfare and enhancing replicability
title Seminatural environments for rodent behavioral testing: a representative design improving animal welfare and enhancing replicability
title_full Seminatural environments for rodent behavioral testing: a representative design improving animal welfare and enhancing replicability
title_fullStr Seminatural environments for rodent behavioral testing: a representative design improving animal welfare and enhancing replicability
title_full_unstemmed Seminatural environments for rodent behavioral testing: a representative design improving animal welfare and enhancing replicability
title_short Seminatural environments for rodent behavioral testing: a representative design improving animal welfare and enhancing replicability
title_sort seminatural environments for rodent behavioral testing: a representative design improving animal welfare and enhancing replicability
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10323197/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37424748
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1192213
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