title: Behavioural characterization in rats using the elevated alley Suok test.
abstract: Exploration of the long elevated alley (the rat Suok test) enables behavioural characterisation of anxiety, activity and neurological phenotypes in rats. Here we show that this new test is sensitive to different types of anxiety in rats, including drugs (pentylenetetrazole)-induced, light-induced and socially induced (encounter with an unfamiliar male) anxiety, as assessed by reduced Suok test horizontal, vertical, directed exploration and stops. High anxiety also leads to higher motor incoordination (as assessed by the number of falls and hind-paw slips), suggesting that this test may be used for combined profiling of anxiety, motor-vestibular anomalies and anxiety-induced motor incoordination in rats. This new behavioural paradigm may be widely used in neurobehavioural stress research, including modelling of stress-evoked states and pharmacological screening of psychotropic drugs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy, Medical School, University of Tampere, Tampere 33014, Finland. avkalueff@inbox.ru
authors.forename: Allan V
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Kalueff
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Minasyan
authors.forename: Pentti
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tuohimaa
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001007:Anxiety / Q000139:chemically induced / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology; D001259:Ataxia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology; D035841:Behavioral Research / Q000379:methods*; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D005106:Exploratory Behavior; D008297:Male; D009043:Motor Activity; D010433:Pentylenetetrazole; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D045442:Rotarod Performance Test; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012931:Social Environment; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000150:complications
chemical_list: D010433:Pentylenetetrazole