Dataset Information

The Home-Cage Automated Skilled Reaching Apparatus (HASRA): Individualized Training of Group-Housed Mice in a Single Pellet Reaching Task.

ABSTRACT: The single pellet reaching task is commonly used in rodents to assess the acquisition of fine motor skill and recovery of function following nervous system injury. Although this task is useful for gauging skilled forelimb use in rodents, the process of training animals is labor intensive and variable across studies and labs. To address these limitations, we developed a single pellet reaching paradigm for training and testing group housed mice within their home cage. Mice enter a training compartment attached to the outside of the cage and retrieve millet seeds presented on a motorized pedestal that can be individually positioned to present seeds to either forelimb. To identify optimal training parameters, we compared task participation and success rates between groups of animals that were presented seeds at two different heights (floor vs mouth height) and at different intervals (fixed-time vs trial-based). The mouth height/fixed interval presentation style was most effective at promoting reaching behavior as all mice reached for seeds within 5 d. Using this paradigm, we assessed stroke-induced deficits in home-cage reaching. Following three?weeks of baseline training, reaching success rate was ?40%, with most trials performed during the dark cycle. A forelimb motor cortex stroke significantly decreased interaction with presented seeds within the first 2?d and impaired reaching success rates for the first 7?d. Our data demonstrate that group-housed mice can be efficiently trained on a single pellet reaching task in the home cage and that this assay is sensitive to stroke induced motor impairments.

SUBMITTER: Salameh G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7581188 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep/Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

The Home-Cage Automated Skilled Reaching Apparatus (HASRA): Individualized Training of Group-Housed Mice in a Single Pellet Reaching Task.

Salameh Gilles G Jeffers Matthew S MS Wu Junzheng J Pitney Julian J Silasi Gergely G

eNeuro 20200901 5

The single pellet reaching task is commonly used in rodents to assess the acquisition of fine motor skill and recovery of function following nervous system injury. Although this task is useful for gauging skilled forelimb use in rodents, the process of training animals is labor intensive and variable across studies and labs. To address these limitations, we developed a single pellet reaching paradigm for training and testing group housed mice within their home cage. Mice enter a training compart ...[more]

PMID: 33008812

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Project description:For ethical and legal reasons it is necessary to assess the severity of procedures in animal experimentation. To estimate the degree of pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm, objective methods that provide gradebale parameters need to be tested and validated for various models. In this context, automated home-cage monitoring becomes more important as a contactless, objective, continuous and non-invasive method. The aim of this study was to examine a recently developed large scale automated home-cage monitoring system (Digital Ventilated Cage, DVC®) with regard to the applicability and added value for severity assessment in a frequently used acute colitis mouse model. Acute colitis was induced in female C57BL/6J mice by varying doses of DSS (1.5 and 2.5%), matched controls received water only (0%). Besides DVC® activity monitoring and nest scoring, model specific parameters like body weight, clinical colitis score, and intestinal histo-pathology were used. In a second approach, we questioned whether DVC® can be used to detect an influence of different handling methods on the behavior of mice. Therefore, we compared activity patterns of mice that underwent tunnel vs. tail handling for routine animal care procedures. In DSS treated mice, disease specific parameters confirmed induction of a graded colitis. In line with this, DVC® revealed reduced activity in these animals. Furthermore, the system displayed stress-related activity changes due to the restraining procedures necessary in DSS-treatment groups. However, no significant differences between tunnel vs. tail handling procedures were detected. For further analysis of the data, a binary classifier was applied to categorize two severity levels (burdened vs. not burdened) based on activity and body weight. In all DSS-treatment groups data points were allocated to the burdened level, in contrast to a handling group. The fraction of "burdened" animals reflected well the course of colitis development. In conclusion, automated home-cage monitoring by DVC® enabled severity assessment in a DSS-induced colitis model equally well as gold standard clinical parameters. In addition, it revealed changes in activity patterns due to routine handling procedures applied in experimental model work. This indicates that large scale home-cage monitoring can be integrated into routine severity assessment in biomedical research.

Dataset Information

The Home-Cage Automated Skilled Reaching Apparatus (HASRA): Individualized Training of Group-Housed Mice in a Single Pellet Reaching Task.

Publications

The Home-Cage Automated Skilled Reaching Apparatus (HASRA): Individualized Training of Group-Housed Mice in a Single Pellet Reaching Task.

Similar Datasets

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