Automated assessment of Pavlovian conditioned freezing and shock reactivity in mice using the VideoFreeze system
- 1
Molecular Cognition Laboratory, Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA
- 2
Program in Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA
- 3
Med-Associates Inc., and Catamount Research and Development, Inc., St Albans, VT, USA
- 4
School of Engineering, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA
The Pavlovian conditioned freezing paradigm has become a prominent mouse and rat model of learning and memory, as well as of pathological fear. Due to its efficiency, reproducibility and well-defined neurobiology, the paradigm has become widely adopted in large-scale genetic and pharmacological screens. However, one major shortcoming of the use of freezing behavior has been that it has required the use of tedious hand scoring, or a variety of proprietary automated methods that are often poorly validated or difficult to obtain and implement. Here we report an extensive validation of the Video Freeze system in mice, a “turn-key” all-inclusive system for fear conditioning in small animals. Using digital video and near-infrared lighting, the system achieved outstanding performance in scoring both freezing and movement. Given the large-scale adoption of the conditioned freezing paradigm, we encourage similar validation of other automated systems for scoring freezing, or other behaviors.
Keywords:
fear, classical conditioning, hippocampus, amygdala, phenotyping, memory, anxiety
Citation:
Anagnostaras SG, Wood SC, Shuman T, Cai DJ, LeDuc AD, Zurn KR, Zurn JB, Sage JR and Herrera GM (2010) Automated assessment of Pavlovian conditioned freezing and shock reactivity in mice using the VideoFreeze system. Front. Behav. Neurosci. 4:158. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2010.00158
Received: 26 October 2009;
Paper pending published: 04 November 2009;
Accepted: 09 August 2010;
Published online: 30 September 2010.
Edited by:
Jeansok J. Kim, University of Washington, USA
Reviewed by:
Paul W. Frankland, Hospital for Sick Children, Canada
Oliver Stiedl, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands
Cristina Vargas-Irwin, Konrad Lorenz University, Colombia
Copyright:
© 2010 Anagnostaras, Wood, Shuman, Cai, LeDuc, Zurn, Zurn, Sage and Herrera. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.
*Correspondence:
Stephan G. Anagnostaras, Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive MC 0109, La Jolla, CA 92093-0109, USA. e-mail: stephana@ucsd.edu