An open-source, low-cost voluntary running activity tracking tool for in vivo rodent studies.

ABSTRACT: In vivo rodent behavioral and physiological studies often benefit from measurement of general activity. However, many existing instruments necessary to track such activity are high in cost and invasive within home cages, some even requiring extensive separate cage systems, limiting their widespread use to collect data. We present here a low-cost open-source alternative that measures voluntary wheel running activity and allows for modulation and customization, along with a reproducible and easy to set-up code pipeline for setup and analysis in Arduino IDE and R. Our robust, non-invasive scalable voluntary running activity tracker utilizes readily accessible magnets, Hall effect sensors, and an Arduino microcontroller. Importantly, it can interface with existing rodent home cages and wheel e

SUBMITTER: Deitzler GE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9462748 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature