title: Laboratory animal welfare: cage enrichment and mouse behaviour.
abstract: Mice housed in standard cages show impaired brain development, abnormal repetitive behaviours (stereotypies) and an anxious behavioural profile, all of which can be lessened by making the cage environment more stimulating. But concerns have been raised that enriched housing might disrupt standardization and so affect the precision and reproducibility of behavioural-test results (for example, see ref. 4). Here we show that environmental enrichment increases neither individual variability in behavioural tests nor the risk of obtaining conflicting data in replicate studies. Our findings indicate that the housing conditions of laboratory mice can be markedly improved without affecting the standardization of results.
authors.affiliation: Division of Neuroanatomy and Behaviour, Institute of Anatomy, University of Zurich, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: David P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Wolfer
authors.forename: Oxana
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Litvin
authors.forename: Samuel
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Morf
authors.forename: Roger M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Nitsch
authors.forename: Hans-Peter
authors.initials: HP
authors.lastname: Lipp
authors.forename: Hanno
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Würbel
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000827:Animal Welfare / Q000592:standards*; D000818:Animals; D000830:Animals, Laboratory / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D006799:Housing, Animal; D006824:Hybridization, Genetic; D018782:Maze Learning; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D008811:Mice, Inbred DBA; D010641:Phenotype; D015203:Reproducibility of Results