The inhibition of feeding produced by novelty, termed “hyponeophagia,” provides a measure of anxiety-related behavior in rodents that is sensitive to the effects of multiple classes of anxiolytic and anxiogenic treatments and their time-course of action. This chapter provides deta ...
To assess a construct, such as anxiety, and to determine potential neurobiological underpinnings of this construct, it is often necessary to utilize an animal model. For example, the elevated plus maze is a widely used behavioral assay that has been validated to assess the anxiety-related beh ...
The light/dark test is based on the innate aversion of rodents to brightly illuminated areas and on the spontaneous exploratory behaviour of the animals, applying mild stressors, i.e. novel environment and light. The test apparatus consists of a small dark secure compartment (one-third) and a ...
Exposure to inescapable shock provokes behavioral disturbances in subsequent shock-escape tests, as well as in other behavioral paradigms, including those that reflect anhedonia. The interference induced by inescapable shock using a yoked (triadic) paradigm has frequently b ...
Dominant submissive relationship (DSR)-based models, one for antidepressant testing, the reduction of submissive behavior model (RSBM), and another for antimanic drug testing, the reduction of dominant behavior model (RDBM), were first established in rats. This chapter discuss ...
The lack of appropriate animal models for bipolar disorder (BPD) is a major factor hindering the research of its pathophysiology and the development of new drug treatments. One approach for the development of better models for the disorder is to separately model a number of its critical behavio ...
The open field test (OFT) is a common measure of exploratory behavior and general activity in both mice and rats, where both the quality and quantity of the activity can be measured. Principally, the open field (OF) is an enclosure, generally square, rectangular, or circular in shape with surrounding ...
In rodents, grooming is a complex and ethologically rich behavior, sensitive to stress and various genetic and pharmacological manipulations, all of which may alter its gross activity and patterning. Observational analysis of grooming activity and its microstructure may serve as a us ...
Mice spontaneously dig in many substrates in the laboratory. This behavior comes from their ancestry in the wild, where they would forage for seeds, grain, insects, and other food to be found buried in the soil or leaf litter in their natural habitat. The most convenient and sensitive way of measuring di ...
Nearly all organisms contain a circadian biological clock that is responsible for coordinating the temporal functions of many physiological systems. The circadian clock is synchronized to the earth’s day/night rhythms via changes in the intensity of light throughout the cycle. In mam ...
The ultrasonic vocalization, or isolation calling, of infant rats and mice has been studied as a measure of anxious affective state and as an early communicative behavior between a pup and mother. The protocol described herein is the typical separation testing procedure. Also included are pr ...
Among all animal models, the forced swimming test (FST) remains one of the mostly used tools for screening antidepressants with different mechanisms of action. This chapter reviews the main aspects of the FST in mice. Most of the sensitivity and variability factors that were assessed on the FST are ...
The tail-suspension test (TST) is a widely used assay for screening potential antidepressant drugs. Its advantages include being a rapid, inexpensive, highly predictive and high-throughput screening test for the acute behavioral effects of antidepressants. The test is based on the p ...
In anxiety research, the search for a model with sufficient clinical predictive validity to support the translation of animal studies on anxiolytic drugs to clinical research is challenging. The stress-induced hyperthermia (SIH) model studies the body temperature increase in resp ...
Despite overall extensive use of various chronic stress models in mice during the past decades, the reproducibility of induction of anhedonia and a depressive-like syndrome with this method remains to be dissatisfying. Generally, this is related to problems of stable induction of a depre ...
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to investigate human and laboratory animal brain reward function using a variety of experimental paradigms. The most popular functional imaging technique relies on the blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) contrast mech ...
The anorectic anx/anx mouse, characterized by reduced food intake, is an interesting and useful model for studies of mechanisms involved in the regulation of food intake and anorexia. The anorexia (anx) mutation arose spontaneously at the Jackson laboratory in 1976 and has now been mapped to a 0.2 ...
The brain serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) system is implicated in the neurobiological control of feeding and appears to be dysfunctional in patients suffering from feeding disorders, such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and obesity. Thanks to the identification and cl ...
In Western societies, the prevalence of obesity continues to increase and, hence, the need to unravel pathways and mechanisms that regulate (un)healthy food intake increases concurrently. This chapter focuses on animal models of food-anticipatory activity (FAA). In rats, FAA occurs w ...
Anorexia nervosa is a life-threatening psychiatric disorder characterized by unrelenting self-starvation, severe weight loss, and hyperactivity. Limited treatment efficacy and high rates of mortality provide strong justification for using animal models to study the biol ...
