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Automated Behavioral Experiments in Mice Reveal Periodic Cycles of Task Engagement within Circadian Rhythms

High-throughput automated experiments accelerate discovery in neuroscience research and reduce bias. To enable high-throughput behavioral experiments, we developed a user-friendly and scalable automated system that can simultaneously train hundreds of mice on behavioral tasks, with time-stamped beha...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Francis, Nikolas A., Bohlke, Kayla, Kanold, Patrick O.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Society for Neuroscience 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6775758/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31488550
http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0121-19.2019
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author Francis, Nikolas A.
Bohlke, Kayla
Kanold, Patrick O.
author_facet Francis, Nikolas A.
Bohlke, Kayla
Kanold, Patrick O.
author_sort Francis, Nikolas A.
collection PubMed
description High-throughput automated experiments accelerate discovery in neuroscience research and reduce bias. To enable high-throughput behavioral experiments, we developed a user-friendly and scalable automated system that can simultaneously train hundreds of mice on behavioral tasks, with time-stamped behavioral information recorded continuously for weeks. We trained 12 cages of C57BL/6J mice (24 mice, 2 mice/cage) to perform auditory behavioral tasks. We found that circadian rhythms modulated overall behavioral activity as expected for nocturnal animals. However, auditory detection and discrimination accuracy remained consistently high in both light and dark cycles. We also found a periodic modulation of behavioral response rates only during the discrimination task, suggesting that the mice periodically reduce task engagement (i.e., take “breaks”) when task difficulty increases due to the more complex stimulus–response paradigm for discrimination versus detection. Our results highlight how automated systems for continuous high-throughput behavioral experiments enable both efficient data collection and new observations on animal behavior.
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spelling pubmed-67757582019-10-04 Automated Behavioral Experiments in Mice Reveal Periodic Cycles of Task Engagement within Circadian Rhythms Francis, Nikolas A. Bohlke, Kayla Kanold, Patrick O. eNeuro Methods/New Tools High-throughput automated experiments accelerate discovery in neuroscience research and reduce bias. To enable high-throughput behavioral experiments, we developed a user-friendly and scalable automated system that can simultaneously train hundreds of mice on behavioral tasks, with time-stamped behavioral information recorded continuously for weeks. We trained 12 cages of C57BL/6J mice (24 mice, 2 mice/cage) to perform auditory behavioral tasks. We found that circadian rhythms modulated overall behavioral activity as expected for nocturnal animals. However, auditory detection and discrimination accuracy remained consistently high in both light and dark cycles. We also found a periodic modulation of behavioral response rates only during the discrimination task, suggesting that the mice periodically reduce task engagement (i.e., take “breaks”) when task difficulty increases due to the more complex stimulus–response paradigm for discrimination versus detection. Our results highlight how automated systems for continuous high-throughput behavioral experiments enable both efficient data collection and new observations on animal behavior. Society for Neuroscience 2019-09-17 /pmc/articles/PMC6775758/ /pubmed/31488550 http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0121-19.2019 Text en Copyright © 2019 Francis et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.
spellingShingle Methods/New Tools
Francis, Nikolas A.
Bohlke, Kayla
Kanold, Patrick O.
Automated Behavioral Experiments in Mice Reveal Periodic Cycles of Task Engagement within Circadian Rhythms
title Automated Behavioral Experiments in Mice Reveal Periodic Cycles of Task Engagement within Circadian Rhythms
title_full Automated Behavioral Experiments in Mice Reveal Periodic Cycles of Task Engagement within Circadian Rhythms
title_fullStr Automated Behavioral Experiments in Mice Reveal Periodic Cycles of Task Engagement within Circadian Rhythms
title_full_unstemmed Automated Behavioral Experiments in Mice Reveal Periodic Cycles of Task Engagement within Circadian Rhythms
title_short Automated Behavioral Experiments in Mice Reveal Periodic Cycles of Task Engagement within Circadian Rhythms
title_sort automated behavioral experiments in mice reveal periodic cycles of task engagement within circadian rhythms
topic Methods/New Tools
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6775758/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31488550
http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0121-19.2019
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