Common Behavioral Experiment Questions
Should the animals be housed in groups or singly-housed before testing?
September 3, 2019
The housing of laboratory animals either alone or in groups has been a subject of discussion for many years, with publications detailing the effects of these…
Will the animal's age influence the test results?
June 28, 2019
Age is a significant deciding factor in many behavioral tests. In certain cases, behaviors that are present early in life may not be present later, while the…
What should the water temperature be (if water is used in the apparatus)?
June 24, 2019
Water-based behavioral tasks, like any environmentally specific experiment, are influenced by such factors as light and temperature. Given that experimental…
Are there sex differences in the test outcomes?
March 29, 2019
While much of the research in behavioral sciences has focused primarily, often exclusively, on male subjects, a recent renewed focus on sexually divergent…
Conducting behavioral neuroscience experiments is not a piece of cake (or, at least not always). It is way too easy to get overwhelmed and confused by all the necessary procedures, protocols, details, and equipment. It’s a lot of information to handle, sometimes even for us. So, we have put together a series of common questions and concerns, in order to help scientists carrying out behavioral experiments.
And by the way, we update this list frequently, so be sure to check back for new content.
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Should the animals be housed in groups or singly-housed before testing?
September 3, 2019
The housing of laboratory animals either alone or in groups has been a subject of discussion for many years, with publications detailing the effects of these…
Will the animal's age influence the test results?
June 28, 2019
Age is a significant deciding factor in many behavioral tests. In certain cases, behaviors that are present early in life may not be present later, while the…
What should the water temperature be (if water is used in the apparatus)?
June 24, 2019
Water-based behavioral tasks, like any environmentally specific experiment, are influenced by such factors as light and temperature. Given that experimental…
Are there sex differences in the test outcomes?
March 29, 2019
While much of the research in behavioral sciences has focused primarily, often exclusively, on male subjects, a recent renewed focus on sexually divergent…
How should I habituate the animals to experimenter handling?
January 21, 2019
Animal handling prior to behavioral experimentation is a crucial consideration for all researchers. However, there are many factors which one must consider…
How should I habituate animals to the testing apparatus?
January 21, 2019
Introduction Habituation of animals to a testing apparatus is a crucial pre-experimentation condition for the proper execution of behavioral analyses in many…
How to choose among the different tests for a particular phenotype?
July 25, 2018
Over the last decade, the neurobehavioral field has experienced an explosion of new behavioral tasks targeting the vast and complex network of behavioral…
What is the Optimum Resting Time Between Behavioral Tasks?
June 21, 2018
If you are a neuroscientist studying the behavioral phenotype of your newly developed knockout mutant line, then the limited number of your valuable animals…
If I am performing a battery of behavioral tests, in what order should I perform them?
May 24, 2018
We have all been in a place whereby the time we were performing the third test of our protocol’s battery of behavioral tests, we realized that our experimental…
How Many Behavioral Tests Can I Perform on a Single Animal?
March 14, 2018
~How many different behavioral tests can be performed on a single animal in their lifetime?~ ~How many different behavioral tests can be performed on a single…
Home Sweet Home: How Housing Conditions Influence Rodent Behavior
October 31, 2017
Imagine two different people: one spends nearly all of their time in a small apartment. The walls are white and lacking decor, and the rest of the space is…
Does Estrous Cycle Affect Behavioral Testing Results in Mice?
September 25, 2017
With the recent NIH requirement to include female subjects in biomedical research, you may be wondering how this will complicate your experiments. Adding a…