Assessment of Cognitive and Sensorimotor Defi cits - Animal Models of Acute Neurological Injuries: Injury and Mechanistic Assessments - page 228

Fig. 2. Activity-testing boxes and lighting setup for computerized video tracking ( top
panel ), and an overhead view showing a reconstructed path as detected by the Ethovision
computerized video tracking system ( bottom panel ) .

50 cm long, 36 cm wide, and 45 cm tall is used for each animal
that will be simultaneously recorded. Currently, our setup has
four such containers arranged so that all four fi t into the fi eld
of view of the overhead video camera.

2.3. Day 3 (See Fig. 3 ):
Accelerating Rotarod

The accelerating rotarod is a test of motor coordination and bal-
ance consisting of a rotating spindle upon which the animal must
continuously walk forward to avoid falling off onto a padded sur-
face ~45 cm below. We currently use a Rotamex-5 accelerating
rotarod made by Columbus Instruments with four lanes (9.5 cm
wide each) and separate spindles for mice/young rats (3 cm diam-
eter) and adult rats (7 cm diameter).