Differences in ethanol drinking between mice selected for high and low swim stress-induced analgesia.

Alcoholism is a complex disorder, still not fully understood, in which environmental and inherited risk factors play essential roles. Of particular importance may be chronic exposure to stress thought to increase preference for ethanol in genetically susceptible individuals. Animal and human data suggest that the opioid system may be involved in the development of alcohol dependence.

Computer assisted video analysis of swimming performance in a forced swim test: simultaneous assessment of duration of immobility and swimming style in mice selected for high and low swim-stress induced analgesia.

In behavioral pharmacology, two problems are encountered when quantifying animal behavior: 1) reproducibility of the results across laboratories, especially in the case of manual scoring of animal behavior; 2) presence of different behavioral idiosyncrasies, common in genetically different animals, that mask or mimic the effects of the experimental treatments. This study aimed to develop an automated method enabling simultaneous assessment of the duration of immobility in mice and the depth of body submersion during swimming by means of computer assisted video analysis system (EthoVision from Noldus). We tested and compared parameters of immobility based either on the speed of an object (animal) movement or based on the percentage change in the object's area between the consecutive video frames.

Lipopolysaccharide does not affect acoustic startle reflex in mice.

Bacterial endotoxin (lipopolysaccharide; LPS) evokes in rodents an adaptive sickness behavior. It also produces changes in stress hormones secretion and activity of brain serotonergic and noradrenergic systems that have been implicated in stress responses, fear, and anxiety. Acoustic startle reflex (ASR) is regarded as a protective behavioral response that is enhanced in threatening situations or following an aversive event, and it can be modulated by physiological and emotional state of an animal.

The usage of video analysis system for detection of immobility in the tail suspension test in mice.

The Tail Suspension Test (TST) is a commonly used screening method for antidepressants properties of drugs in mice. To date, immobility in the TST was scored live, by an observer, or automatically, using devices in which mouse movements were detected by a strain gauge. In this study we tested whether the EthoVision video analysis system can be used reliably and accurately for automatic recording and scoring of duration of immobility in the TST.