A Matlab-based toolbox for characterizing behavior of rodents engaged in string-pulling
Open Access
- 26 June 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd in eLife
Abstract
String-pulling by rodents is a behavior in which animals make rhythmical body, head, and bilateral forearm as well as skilled hand movements to spontaneously reel in a string. Typical analysis includes kinematic assessment of hand movements done by manually annotating frames. Here, we describe a Matlab-based software that allows whole-body motion characterization using optical flow estimation, descriptive statistics, principal component, and independent component analyses as well as temporal measures of Fano factor, entropy, and Higuchi fractal dimension. Based on image-segmentation and heuristic algorithms for object tracking, the software also allows tracking of body, ears, nose, and forehands for estimation of kinematic parameters such as body length, body angle, head roll, head yaw, head pitch, and path and speed of hand movements. The utility of the task and software is demonstrated by characterizing postural and hand kinematic differences in string-pulling behavior of two strains of mice, C57BL/6 and Swiss Webster.Keywords
Funding Information
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research (390930)
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (40352)
- Alberta Innovates (43568)
- Alberta Alzheimer Research Program Grant (PAZ15010)
- Alberta Alzheimer Research Program Grant (PAZ17010)
- Alzheimer Society of Canada (43674)
This publication has 33 references indexed in Scilit:
- A behavioral method for identifying recovery and compensation: Hand use in a preclinical stroke model using the single pellet reaching taskNeuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2013
- JAABA: interactive machine learning for automatic annotation of animal behaviorNature Methods, 2013
- Detecting Scene Elements Using Maximally Stable Colour RegionsCommunications in Computer and Information Science, 2010
- Staircase (Skilled Reaching) TestPublished by Elsevier BV ,2010
- Spontaneous performance of wild baboons on three novel food-access puzzlesAnimal Cognition, 2007
- Lucas/Kanade Meets Horn/Schunck: Combining Local and Global Optic Flow MethodsInternational Journal of Computer Vision, 2005
- Long–Evans rats have a larger cortical topographic representation of movement than Fischer-344 rats: A microstimulation study of motor cortex in naı̈ve and skilled reaching-trained ratsBrain Research Bulletin, 2002
- Quantitative and Qualitative Impairments in Skilled Reaching in the Mouse ( Mus musculus ) After a Focal Motor Cortex StrokeStroke, 2002
- An endpoint, descriptive, and kinematic comparison of skilled reaching in mice (Mus musculus) with rats (Rattus norvegicus)Behavioural Brain Research, 1996
- Approach to an irregular time series on the basis of the fractal theoryPhysica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, 1988