title: A methodological improvement and system validation to obtain precise behavioral parameters for schedule-induced polydipsia.
abstract: A Schedule-Induced Polydipsia (SIP) animal behaviors monitor system was devised. The system included a software package to acquire data and to format the data storage of the animal behavior in the experiment was designed. Data analysis software will also extract the necessary information from recorded data. The SIP experimental apparatus consists of a number of subsystems. They are operant chambers, event counters, signal acquisition and storage system. The operant chamber is equipped with hopper, pellet and lick sensor and locomotion detector. The data acquisition and storage subsystem are custom designed that run on IBM-PC. The discrete time markers for pellet drop, bar pressing and licking water were recorded at 200 Hz. The image of rat locomotion was recorded at 10 Hz. A test of four different stages of animal to verify the accuracy of the system was reported in this article. The food-deprived rats that were exposed to the intermittent food schedule (1 per minute) exhibit an excess drinking behavior. The animal behaviors that were monitored during the scheduled events are adjunctive, facultative and terminal behavior. The volume of water intake was also recorded for reference. The real time data is stored chronologically into two types of data file. Therefore, a special data analysis procedure is designed to extract the results for off-line statistic analysis. The extracted parameters for animal behaviors analyzing including drinking efficiency, inter-lick intervals, number of drinking bursts, size of burst, temporal distribution of licking, temporal distribution of bar pressing and locomotion. The system can be employed in many different SIP studies such as investigating the effect of acute and chronic influence of amphetamine.
authors.affiliation: Department of BME, Chung Yuan University, Taiwan, ROC. weichih@medical.be.cycu.edu.tw
authors.forename: W C
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: C Y
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Lai
authors.forename: L Y
authors.initials: LY
authors.lastname: Shyu
authors.forename: C S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Tung
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D003196:Computer Graphics; D004327:Drinking Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D001330:Electronic Data Processing; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology; D010827:Physiology / Q000379:methods*; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley