title: Mathematical methods to model rodent behavior in the elevated plus-maze.
abstract: The elevated plus maze is a widely used experimental test to study anxiety-like rodent behavior. It is made of four arms, two open and two closed, connected at a central area forming a plus shaped maze. The whole apparatus is elevated 50 cm from the floor. The anxiety of the animal is usually assessed by the number of entries and duration of stay in each arm type during a 5-min period. Different mathematical methods have been proposed to model the mechanisms that control the animal behavior in the maze, such as factor analysis, statistical inference on Markov chains and computational modeling. In this review we discuss these methods and propose possible extensions of them as a direction for future research.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Física, FFCLRP, Universidade de São Paulo, 14040-901 Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil. Electronic address: birutaibm@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Rafael
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Arantes
authors.forename: Julián
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tejada
authors.forename: Geraldine G
authors.initials: GG
authors.lastname: Bosco
authors.forename: Silvio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Morato
authors.forename: Antonio C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Roque
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001007:Anxiety; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D008433:Mathematics; D018782:Maze Learning; D023421:Models, Animal; D012377:Rodentia
keywords: Computer modeling of rodent behavior; Elevated plus maze; Factor analysis; Markov chain models; Mathematical modeling of rodent behavior; Rodent exploratory behavior