Display of individuality in avoidance behavior and risk assessment of inbred mice.

ABSTRACT: Factors determining individuality are still poorly understood. Rodents are excellent model organisms to study individuality, due to a rich behavioral repertoire and the availability of well-characterized isogenic populations. However, most current behavioral assays for rodents have short test duration in novel test environments and require human interference, which introduce coercion, thereby limiting the assessment of naturally occurring individuality. Thus, we developed an automated behavior system to longitudinally monitor conditioned fear for assessing PTSD-like behavior in individual mice. The system consists of a safe home compartment connected to a risk-prone test compartment (TC). Entry and exploration of the TC is solely based on deliberate choice determined by individual fear res

SUBMITTER: Hager T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4165351 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature