An approach to monitoring home-cage behavior in mice that facilitates data sharing

ABSTRACT Genetically modified mice are used as models for a variety of human behavioral conditions. However, behavioral phenotyping can be a major bottleneck in mouse genetics because many

of the classic protocols are too long and/or are vulnerable to unaccountable sources of variance, leading to inconsistent results between centers. We developed a home-cage approach using a

Chora feeder that is controlled by—and sends data to—software. In this approach, mice are tested in the standard cages in which they are held for husbandry, which removes confounding

variables such as the stress induced by out-of-cage testing. This system increases the throughput of data gathering from individual animals and facilitates data mining by offering new

opportunities for multimodal data comparisons. In this protocol, we use a simple work-for-food testing strategy as an example application, but the approach can be adapted for other

experiments looking at, e.g., attention, decision-making or memory. The spontaneous behavioral activity of mice in performing the behavioral task can be monitored 24 h a day for several

days, providing an integrated assessment of the circadian profiles of different behaviors. We developed a Python-based open-source analytical platform (Phenopy) that is accessible to

scientists with no programming background and can be used to design and control such experiments, as well as to collect and share data. This approach is suitable for large-scale studies

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SIMILAR CONTENT BEING VIEWED BY OTHERS DATA REPURPOSING FROM DIGITAL HOME CAGE MONITORING ENLIGHTENS NEW PERSPECTIVES ON MOUSE MOTOR BEHAVIOUR AND REDUCTION PRINCIPLE Article Open access 05

July 2023 AN 8-CAGE IMAGING SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATED ANALYSES OF MOUSE BEHAVIOR Article Open access 19 May 2023 EVALUATION OF THE DIGITAL VENTILATED CAGE® SYSTEM FOR CIRCADIAN PHENOTYPING

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Neurosci._ 32, 1726–1734 (2010). Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar  Download references ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We thank the IT group at the IIT for technical support. This study was

supported by the European Commission FP7 Programme under project 223263 (PhenoScale). AUTHOR INFORMATION Author notes * Edoardo Balzani and Matteo Falappa: These authors contributed equally

to this work. AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Department of Neuroscience and Brain Technologies, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy Edoardo Balzani, Matteo Falappa & Valter Tucci

* Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Riabilitazione, Oftalmologia, Genetica e Scienze Materno-Infantili (DINOGMI), Università degli Studi di Genova, Genova, Italy Matteo Falappa * Department of

Psychology, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey Fuat Balci * Research Center for Translational Medicine, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey Fuat Balci Authors * Edoardo Balzani View author

publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Matteo Falappa View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Fuat Balci

View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Valter Tucci View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

CONTRIBUTIONS E.B. and M.F. wrote Phenopy and performed the experiments and the analyses. F.B. designed the original timing analyses. V.T. conceived, planned and supervised the project, and

wrote the manuscript with the help of all co-authors. CORRESPONDING AUTHOR Correspondence to Valter Tucci. ETHICS DECLARATIONS COMPETING INTERESTS The authors declare no competing financial

interests. INTEGRATED SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION SUPPLEMENTARY FIGURE 1 TOP VIEW OF CHORA FEEDERS This picture shows the top panel of the CHORA feeders. The power lever and the operational

mode lever are indicated by a red arrow. The lever of the operational state is set in via cable modality. Switch the lever for wireless mode. Once the feeder is turned on, the communication

modality cannot be changed. To change the communication modality, first switch off the feeder and then change the communication modality. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION SUPPLEMENTARY TEXT AND

FIGURES Supplementary Figure 1, Supplementary Methods and Supplementary Tables 1 and 2. (PDF 763 kb) SUPPLEMENTARY DATA Recorded data and Python example scripts. (ZIP 117880 kb) RUNNING

PHENOPY. This video shows how to set up a behavioral experimental protocol using Chora feeders and Phenopy. (MP4 4370 kb) DATA ANALYSIS EXAMPLE. This video shows how to import, export, edit

and analyze data using Phenopy. (MOV 4714 kb) IMPORTING FUNCTIONS. This video shows how to upload a new importation function into Phenopy. (MOV 2841 kb) IMPORTING A NEW ANALYSIS. This video

shows how to upload a new analysis function into Phenopy. (MOV 4635 kb) RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Balzani, E., Falappa, M., Balci,

F. _et al._ An approach to monitoring home-cage behavior in mice that facilitates data sharing. _Nat Protoc_ 13, 1331–1347 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nprot.2018.031 Download citation *

Published: 17 May 2018 * Issue Date: June 2018 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nprot.2018.031 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

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