Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 106, Issue 50, Pages 21335-21340Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0812513106
Keywords
dimensionality emergence assay (DIEM assay); dynamics of exploration; mouse open field behavior; neophobia
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Funding
- Israel Science Foundation of the Israeli Academy of Science [915/05]
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Exploration is a central component of human and animal behavior that has been studied in rodents for almost a century. The measures used by neuroscientists to characterize full-blown exploration are limited in exposing the dynamics of the exploratory process, leaving the morphogenesis of its structure and meaning hidden. By unfettering exploration from constraints imposed by hunger, thirst, coercion, and the confines of small cage and short session, using advanced computational tools, we reveal its meaning in the operational world of the mouse. Exploration consists of reiterated roundtrips of increasing amplitude and freedom, involving an increase in the number of independent dimensions along which the mouse moves (macro degrees of freedom). This measurable gradient can serve as a standard reference scale for the developmental dynamics of some aspects of the mouse's emotional-cognitive state and for the study of the interface between behavior and the neurophysiologic and genetic processes mediating it.
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