Automation of the free-exploratory paradigm.

The free-exploratory paradigm (FEP) is currently the only proposed animal model of trait anxiety, making it highly valuable to behavioural neuroscience. However, FEP has not yet been automated, so its results depend on human scoring, which can be quite imprecise. The aim of this study was, therefore, to validate an automated version of FEP, using a commercially available video-tracking system (ANY-maze(©) - Stoelting Co.