Pain/Behavior Testing Flashcards
Acoustic startle
Tests sensorimotor learning, sensory function, anxiety.
Startle response to loud, unexpected sound. Chamber measures whole body reaction. Pre-pulse inhibition - Use a softer noise first to warn of event and decrease the magnitude of the startle.
Deficiency in sensory gate filtering mechanism serves as a clinical measure of schizophrenia.
Clue - Sealed box, may have foam lining for sound control
Shuttle avoidance box
Tests discriminated avoidance learning and learned helplessness
Active avoidance - Aversive event (foot shock) follows benign event (light flash). Animal learns that light flash indicates oncoming food shock and will move to a different component to avoid. Active = Learn to exit
Passive avoidance - Allowed to enter light and dark, but prefer dark, Eventually will get shocked every time they enter dark and learn to avoid. Passive = Learn to avoid
Clue - Box with different chambers, may see light and dark
Light dark box
Tests anxiety
Different from shuttle box because no shock. Less anxious mice spend more time in light
Open field
Tests anxiety and motor function
Animals placed in middle and behaviors recorded
Clue - Single chamber. Just a box.
Operant conditioning or Skinner box
Tests memory loss/learning deficits after drug, manipulation, etc. Each animal can serve as their own control
What is operant/Skinner and classical/Pavlov conditioning?
Operant - Animal performs a behavior and something happens. If good, positive reinforcement. If bad, positive punishment.
Classical - Animal produces an unconditioned response to an unconditioned stimulus paired with a conditioned stimulus. Eventually the conditioned stimulus with trigger the unconditioned response. Response formed between two stimuli.
T Maze
Tests learning and memory
Recessed food cups at distal end of one long arm. Animals placed in stem. Trial ends when animal finds food or makes a wrong turn. Often alternate where the food is, so animals must remember which way they turned in the previous test to know which way to turn.
Radial arm maze (8, 12, or 16)
Tests learning and memory
Test how long it takes the mouse to find the food in all arms. Or close all doors after success and mouse must remember what arm it previously went in.
Elevated plus or zero maze
Tests fear and anxiety
Balances novel area experimentation with fear.
Elevated zero maze fixes ambiguity associated with time spent in center of elevated plus maze.
Normal C57 and SD spend 30% of time in open areas.
Hebb-Williams Maze
Tests spatial learning and memory
Classic maze paradigm
Rotameter
Tests sensory motor function.
Device makes partial and complete right and left turns
Often used in models of Parkinson disease with unilateral lesions in the dopaminergic nigrostriatal system
Clue - Harness
Porsolt forced swim
Tests depression.
How long until mouse gives up?
Clue - Small cup/pool of water with no platform
Morris water maze
Spatial learning and memory
Shapes on wall tell rodent where they are in space and where platform is. The path to the hidden platform should become more direct over time.
Clue - Large pool of water with shapes on wall.
Barnes maze
Tests spatial learning and memory
All but one hole is false-bottomed, while one leads to escape. Multiple daily trials can be used to train mice to find the fixed escape location. Following training,
Use 3 search strategies: Random, serial, or spatial
Clue - Escape box.
Hole board test
Tests anxiety and stress, spatial learning, and short- and long-term memory
Looks at changes in normal rodent exploratory behavior. Infrared detector in each hole records mouse probing behavior. Increased anxiety = decreased head dipping
Food can also be placed in each hole.
Clue - Smaller than Barnes, nowhere to escape
Rotorod
Coordination, balance, measure of locomotor ability
Hanging wire/Grip strength
Tests muscle strength, motor/neuromuscular impairment
Tail suspension
Tests depression.
Typically six minutes. Quantify escape behaviors.
Pletysometer
Tests paw swelling
Volume meter of amount of water displaced by paw.
Von Frey
Tests mechanical nociception
More painful mice withdrawal faster
Classical - Uses different sized filaments
Digital - Unit measures force applied to induce withdrawal
Plantar test/Hargreave’s method
Tests thermal pain
Discern peripherally mediated response to thermal stimulation.
Animal unrestrained and heat applied to one foot at a time to measure withdrawal latency
Clue - Multi-chambered clear box on a platform.
Hot plate
Tests pain
Centrally mediated acute pain reflex.
Latency to lift and lick paw
Tail flick
Tests spinal reflex
Measures sensitivity to high intensity light beam focused on tail. Latency to flick tail out of beam
Time to Integrate Nest Test (TINT)
Testing pain
Orofacial pain assessment device
Social recognition test
Tests social preference
3 connected compartments with two chambers for familiar and unfamiliar mice
Rodent catwalk
Measure locomotion on a stationary surface
Animals on illuminated transparent surface and footprints are reflected onto a viewing surface. Computer records and analyzes footprints, must be recalibrated for each trial. Newer models do not require recalibration.
Rodent treadmill
Measure locomotion in response to neuromuscular trauma, anxiolytic drugs, and behavior mod.
Requires conditioning, can be motivated by food with electric shock if too far forward.
ON CEW
Ocular, nasal bulge, cheek bulge, ear, and whisker
ON EW
Ocular tightening, nasal/cheek FLATTENING, ears, whiskers
O CHWE
Ocular tightening, cheek flattening, nostril shape, whisker shape, ears.
Beam walking
Assess motor balance and coordination - Models of disease, TBI, spinal cord injury
17mm diameter wooden beam, 1m long, 50cm off ground with goal/home cage at end. Record time taken to cross beam and number of paw faults/slips
Buried food test
Tests olfaction and anosmia (absence of sense of smell)
Mouse familiarized with food stimulus, withheld from food for 18-24 hours, then placed in clean cage with 3cm of bedding with food stimulus buried.
Latency to find food reward.
Circadian activity
Housed in regular cages with wireless running wheel that measures activity patterns for 7-21 days under different light-dark cycles.
Cylinder test
Tests locomotor asymmetry
Mouse placed in cylinder and forelimb activity (placement of whole palm against the wall) is measured over 5 minutes.
Fear conditioning
Tests behavioral fear response to a conditioned stimulus that predicts a mild foot shock.
Hippocampal-dependent associative learning deficits - Context conditioning
Amygdala-dependent deficits - Cue conditioning.
Training - Auditory cue followed by immediate foot shock (0.1-0.5 mA)
Testing - Re-exposed to test chamber and context dependent freezing recorded. May also play auditory cue to induce cue-dependent freezing.
Gait analysis
Tests locomotor and neural function
Mice on treadmill or glass-bottomed table with digital video system capturing paw placement.
Marble burying
Tests neophobia, anxiety, and obsessive compulsive behavior
Mice in novel cage with deep bedding and marbles evenly spaced. Number of marbles buried counted at end of time.
Novel object recognition test
Tests memory
Animal in an enclosure with two identical objects, removed, then returned to previous enclosure with a novel object replacing a previous object. Should chose to explore novel object.
Novelty-induced hypophagia
Hyponeophagia - Presence of new environmental stimulus suppresses feeding behavior.
Tests efficacy of anxiolytics and antidepressants.
Measure latency to approach and consume novel food in home cage vs. novel environment
Novelty-suppressed feeding - Uses dietary food restriction to motivate animals to feed in new environment
Novelty-induced hypophagia - Uses pre-exposure to familiarize animal to novel food source
Pole test
Tests bradykinesia
Animal placed head upward on 50cm tall vertical pole inside home cage. Latency to orient downward and descend pole.
Social interaction test
Pairs of mice placed in test chamber and observed. Time spent in affiliative and aggressive behavior measured. May be given anxiolytics.
Sucrose preference
Tests for anhedonia - Lack of interest in rewarding stimuli
Assess animals’ interest in seeking out sweet reward relative to plain drinking water. Failure to have a bias may indicate depression/anhedonia.
Visual cliff test
Mouse placed on ridge of visual cliff and behavior is positive if animal steps on checkered surface and negative if onto the virtual cliff.
