Digging behavior discrimination test to probe burrowing and exploratory digging in male and female mice.

ABSTRACT: Digging behavior is often used to test motor function and repetitive behaviors in mice. Different digging paradigms have been developed for behaviors related to anxiety and compulsion in mouse lines generated to recapitulate genetic mutations leading to psychiatric and neurological disorders. However, the interpretation of these tests has been confounded by the difficulty of determining the motivation behind digging in mice. Digging is a naturalistic mouse behavior that can be focused toward different goals, that is foraging for food, burrowing for shelter, burying objects, or even for recreation as has been shown for dogs, ferrets, and human children. However, the interpretation of results from current testing protocols assumes the motivation behind the behavior often concluding that incr

SUBMITTER: Pond HL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9066774 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature