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Published November 28, 2018 | Submitted
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Mouse Academy: high-throughput automated training and trial-by-trial behavioral analysis during learning

Abstract

Progress in understanding how individual animals learn will require high-throughput standardized methods for behavioral training but also advances in the analysis of the resulting behavioral data. In the course of training with multiple trials, an animal may change its behavior abruptly, and capturing such events calls for a trial-by-trial analysis of the animal's strategy. To address this challenge, we developed an integrated platform for automated animal training and analysis of behavioral data. A low-cost and space-efficient apparatus serves to train entire cohorts of mice on a decision-making task under identical conditions. A generalized linear model (GLM) analyzes each animal's performance at single-trial resolution. This model infers the momentary decision-making strategy and can predict the animal's choice on each trial with an accuracy of ~80%. We also introduce automated software to assess the animal's detailed trajectories and body poses within the apparatus. Unsupervised analysis of these features revealed unusual trajectories that represent hesitation in the response. This integrated hardware/software platform promises to accelerate the understanding of animal learning.

Additional Information

The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. We thank Joshua Sanders for technical assistance in incorporating Bpod into our system. We thank Ann Kennedy for insightful comments and suggestions on analysis of the behavioral trajectories. We thank Oisin Mac Adoha and Yuxin Chen for helpful comments and discussions. This work was supported by a grant from the Simons Foundation (SCGB 543015, M.M. and P.P.) and a postdoctoral fellowship from the Swartz Foundation (M.Q.). AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS: M.Q. and M.M. designed the study; M.Q. and S.S. constructed the hardware setup and wrote the controlling software; M.Q. performed experiments and collected data for analysis; M.Q. developed the iterative generalized linear model with input from P.P. and M.M; C.S. developed the automated tracking software; T.Z. implemented animal tracking and behavioral trajectory analysis with input from M.Q., P.P. and M.M; M.Q. and M.M. wrote the manuscript with comments from all authors. DATA AVAILABILITY: The datasets analyzed during the current study are available in https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gkPbqGYKPGs7Rx1WNmubQW0dKyYE5YVR The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Created:
August 19, 2023
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October 19, 2023