Alzheimer’s disease, the most common neurodegenerative disease, is characterized by a progressive loss of synapses and accumulation of amyloid-beta (Aβ) peptides in the brain. Previous studies demonstrated that acute increase in synaptic activity in cultured hippocampal slic ...
Removal of the olfactory bulbs from the rodent induces neuronal reorganisation and the expression of behavioural, neurochemical, neuroendocrine and immune changes that resemble those observed in major depressive disorder. As such this model is widely used to examine the neurobio ...
Multiple biological processes are implicated in the neurobiology of depression based primarily on the characterization of antidepressant efficacy in na�ve rodents rather than on models that recapitulate the protracted feelings of anhedonia and helplessness that typify dep ...
This chapter outlines the experimental methods for inducing Depression-like behavior in mice by separating group-housed mice to individual housing. This is a model of loneliness in mice. Loneliness-induced depression is measured using the forced swim test (FST) and tail suspension t ...
Among all mammalian species, pups are the most highly dependent on their mothers not only for nutrition but also for physical interaction. Therefore, disruption of the mother–pup interaction changes the physiology and behavior of pups. We reviewed the experimental procedure of early we ...
The assessment of variations in maternal behavior in laboratory rodents is challenging yet may provide an essential tool for understanding the mechanisms linking early life experiences to individual differences in stress responsivity and behavioral indices of depression and a ...
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is clinically defined by exposure to a significantly threatening and/or horrifying event and the presence of a certain number of symptoms from each of three symptom clusters at least one month after the event. The procedures involved in defining clin ...
A primary symptom in the diagnosis of PTSD is the inability to control fear. Therefore, the study of fear and its inhibition are essential in understanding the disorder. This chapter will provide detailed protocols for fear conditioning and extinction which can be used as a model to further under ...
Effects of compounds on suppressed or punished responding are often used to predict anxiolytic efficacy in humans. The use of mice in these tests has many advantages including the ability to evaluate transgenic animals. In contrast to steady state baselines that can take months to establish, ...
Differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate (DRL) is an operant conditioning schedule that requires behavioral inhibition for a given length of time, known as the interresponse time (IRT), in order to receive reinforcement. For rodents under a DRL 36 or 72-s schedule, antidepressant tr ...
Since the discovery of the intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS) procedure in the 1950s, studies using this method have greatly expanded our knowledge of the neurobiology of motivation and reward. ICSS is an operant behavioral procedure in which laboratory rodents prepared with stim ...
Understanding behavioral regulation can further progress by developing new approaches that allow refinement of behavioral phenotypes. The current availability of several thousand different mutant mice and of human candidate genes for emotional (affective) disorders cha ...
Abnormal reward-seeking behavior is a key feature in several psychiatric and neuroscience diseases. Though there are numerous paradigms for measuring reward-seeking behavior in rodents, each has limitations that affect the ability of the researcher to make conclusions on the rewa ...
Impulsive behaviour is a fundamental component of numerous psychiatric illnesses including mood disorders. In order to measure “impulsivity” and understand the complex neurological underpinnings of this behavioural construct, it is beneficial to employ the use of mouse models. ...
Sexual dysfunction is prevalent among patients with poor emotional health and has been strongly associated with antidepressant medications. This chapter provides an overview of the general experimental approaches for assessing male sexual behavior (MSB) in male mice. One of the mo ...
Measuring motor activity has been one of the most commonly used tools to assess behavior in rodents. The macroscopic measure of behavior called motor activity is actually composed of assemblies of microscopic responses however. These microscopic responses can be measured simultane ...
Animal behavioral tests are useful tools for modeling complex human brain disorders. The Suok test (ST) is a relatively new behavioral paradigm that simultaneously examines anxiety and neurological/vestibular phenotypes in rodents. The novelty and instability of the ST apparatus ...
Telemetry in mice can be a powerful tool for assessing physiological responses to emotional stimuli. It can provide continuously recorded data over the course of the stress response and can be incorporated into established behavioral paradigms and procedures in a relatively seamless ...
Assays of social approach behavior involve measuring the social investigatory behavior of a subject mouse toward a stimulus mouse. Such assays represent a phenotyping tool that may be applied to mouse models of mood and anxiety disorders, as well as other neuropsychiatric disease, to unde ...
There are a plethora of whole animal models that are utilized to assess the neurobiological substrates involved in complex constructs affecting the human condition, such as anxiety. One such behavioral measure that utilizes a conditioned response that can be utilized to assess the neuro ...