Animal Behavorial Core

Overview

Animal Behavorial Core

Contact the Behavorial Phenotyping Collaborative Core at 513-636-8622.

The laboratories of Charles Vorhees and Michael Williams have established a Behavorial Phenotyping Collaborative Core (BP Core) facility in the Division of Neurology that is available to PIs at CCRF, UC and outside Principal Investigators. The BP Core offers a variety of behavioral assays to enable the characterization of CNS dysfunction in mice or rats.

The BP Core is not a traditional fee-for-service facility.  It is designed to establish a collaborative arrangement with PIs who have rodent models of diseases/disorders that are interested in determining the functional phenotype of their experimental animals (genetic or drug/chemical-induced) in depth with the aim of characterization or the long-term aim of in-depth analysis with ongoing collaboration and joint grant applications.

Methods offered:

  1. Acoustic Startle/PPI
  2. Forced Swim Test (FST)
  3. Stride/gait analysis
  4. Narrow bridges/balance beam
  5. Elevated Plus and/or Elevated Zero Maze
  6. Defensive (Marble) Burying
  7. Tail Suspension
  8. Locomotor activity
  9. Light-Dark box test/Dark emergence
  10. Morris water maze (MWM)
  11. Cincinnati water maze (CWM)
  12. Novel Object Recognition (NOR)
  13. Conditioned Fear
  14. Latent Inhibition
  15. Locomotion with pharmacological challenge

Non-behavioral methods:

  1. Plasma Corticosterone
  2. Brain monoamines (dopamine and serotonin and their major metabolites)

All procedures are available for mice or rats and most apparatuses have been scaled to each species to optimize performance.  In addition, test methods have been adapted to the species-specific response characteristics of mice versus rats.  Historical control data have been collected on C57BL mice and Sprague-Dawley/Charles River rats.

Many methods are automated using video tracking systems or photocell-based technology.  Many of the procedures are described in Jacqueline N. Crawley's text: "What's Wrong with My Mouse? Behavioral Phenotyping of Transgenic and Knockout Mice" (Wiley-Liss, New York, NY, 2000).

The BP Core offers full data analysis and interpretation, including graphical representation.  Data are analyzed using SAS Programs (SAS Institute, Cary, NC), such as Proc GLM and Proc Mixed analyses of variance (ANOVA), including factorial, repeated measures, analyses of covariance, and hierarchical ANOVA.  Simple-effect (slice effect) testing and a posteriori group comparisons are included to pinpoint effects using a variety of contemporary methods to control for multiple comparisons, including the Bonferroni and Hochberg step-down methods to control for multiple comparisons to protect against type I error while maintaining statistical power.  Graphs of data are made using SigmaPlot.