A new high-throughput system developed at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute is seeking to streamline the process for studying mouse behavior and physiology. The system automates the process of teaching animals to do experimental tasks, allowing multiple animals to be trained simultaneously.
To perform basic behavioral science research in mice, it is necessary to first train the animals to do an experimental task, such as pushing a button. This process can take months, cause the mice to get stressed from being handled by experimenters and lead to experimental variation as not all labs follow the same process for training. The authors realized that automation could be a useful tool to minimize these issues.
The researchers were able to train 100 mice simultaneously using the automated system they created. "Previously, training just one mouse took about 15 hours of a researcher's time," estimates Andrea Benucci, whose group conceived of the study. "Now, with twelve setups we are down to less than one-and-a-half hours.”
The team also was able to integrate the set-up with a two-photon microscope for imaging of cortical networks.
The system has been patented by RIKEN and the results of their research were published yesterday in Nature Communications. The team hopes to make this tool widely available to neuroscience labs.