Rodent Behavioral Assessment in the Home Cage Using the SmartCage System - Animal Models of Acute Neurological Injuries: Injury and Mechanistic Assessments - page 198

and EMG patterns ( 18, 19 ). EEG recording of wakeful activity,
sleep, and abnormal brain electrophysiology (e.g., seizures) are
thus detailed in other special chapters.

1.3. Rodent Home
Cage Behavior
Monitoring System:
SmartCage™

Currently, almost every behavioral assay requires different appara-
tuses and specifi c software. Moreover, most of these tests are con-
ducted in environments outside of the animal's home cage for
short periods (typically ranging from 10 to 60 min). Rodents, par-
ticularly mice, are very sensitive to environmental conditions. One
environmental factor of particular importance is lighting, which
can have pronounced effects on the measured amount and distri-
bution of sleep and other behaviors, especially since most testing
usually occurs during the light cycle which is the animals' sleep
period ( 20 ). Recently, an automated approach for the quantitative
characterization of basic behavioral elements and their patterns in
the freely behaving mouse in a modifi ed home cage has been
reported which demonstrates free moving behavioral structure and
changes in mice with single gene mutations altering energy balance
( 9 ). This report reinforces the need of a shift toward analyzing
rodents' behavior in their home cages.
Through initial collaborations with University of Stanford ( 21 )
and later with SRI International, we have developed a rodent
behavioral monitoring platform, termed SmartCage™ (Fig. 1 ) ( 7 ).
This new system is composed of infrared (IR) matrices for activity,
position, and locomotion detection, fl oor-sensor for indirect sleep
monitoring, and other modular devices, such as rotarod, and a
dark box insert with special software to cover wide range of specifi c
behavioral testing. All signals are transmitted via USB cable to a
personal computer. Data acquisition is accomplished by the embed-
ded software in the microprocessor and graphic user interface on
the computer (Fig. 2a ). The acquisition and analysis software can
be readily operated on a PC without any special analog/digital
converter. This system can provide a simple, versatile, and cost-effec-
tive toolkit for automated quantifi cation of spontaneous activity,
inactive state, or sleep . The SmartCage™ system can help expedite
the process of behavioral phenotyping and in vivo drug screening.

2. Materials

2.1. Test Subjects

Mouse or rat test subjects of appropriate strain, sex, and age accord-
ing to the experimental designs can be purchased from a number
of vendors.

2.2. Apparatuses
and Devices

A variety of photo-beam (also called IR photocell)-based behav-
ioral apparatuses of similar design are commercially available from
a number of manufactures, for example, AfaSci ( www.afasci.com ),