A Matlab-based toolbox for characterizing behavior of rodents engaged in string-pulling
- University of Lethbridge, Canada
Abstract
String-pulling by rodents is a behavior in which animals make rhythmical body, head, and bilateral forearm as well as skilled hand movements to spontaneously reel in a string. Typical analysis includes kinematic assessment of hand movements done by manually annotating frames. Here, we describe a Matlab® based software that allows whole-body motion characterization using optical flow estimation, descriptive statistics, principal component, and independent component analyses as well as temporal measures of Fano factor, entropy, and Higuchi fractal dimension. Based on image-segmentation and heuristic algorithms for object tracking, the software also allows tracking of body, ears, nose, and forehands for estimation of kinematic parameters such as body length, body angle, head roll, head yaw, head pitch, and path and speed of hand movements. The utility of the task and software is demonstrated by characterizing postural and hand kinematic differences in string-pulling behavior of two strains of mice, C57BL/6 and Swiss Webster.
Data availability
The software is available to download from https://github.com/samsoon-inayat/string_pulling_mouse_matlab. All video source and processed data is made available at the following website https://osf.io/gmk9y/?view_only=cdf229798f2d40e08b98aeadd927f1c2
Article and author information
Author details
Majid H Mohajerani
Funding
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (390930)
- Majid H Mohajerani
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (40352)
- Majid H Mohajerani
Alberta Innovates (43568)
- Majid H Mohajerani
Alberta Alzheimer Research Program Grant (PAZ15010)
- Majid H Mohajerani
Alberta Alzheimer Research Program Grant (PAZ17010)
- Majid H Mohajerani
Alzheimer Society of Canada (43674)
- Majid H Mohajerani
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All experiments were performed in strict accordance with the Canadian Council of Animal Care and were approved by the University of Lethbridge Animal Welfare Committee (Protocol 1812).
Copyright
© 2020, Inayat et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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A Matlab-based toolbox for characterizing behavior of rodents engaged in string-pulling
eLife 9:e54540.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.54540
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Human-specific cognitive abilities depend on information processing in the cerebral cortex, where the neurons are significantly larger and their processes longer and sparser compared to rodents. We found that, in synaptically connected layer 2/3 pyramidal cells (L2/3 PCs), the delay in signal propagation from soma to soma is similar in humans and rodents. To compensate for the longer processes of neurons, membrane potential changes in human axons and/or dendrites must propagate faster. Axonal and dendritic recordings show that the propagation speed of action potentials (APs) is similar in human and rat axons, but the forward propagation of excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) and the backward propagation of APs are 26 and 47% faster in human dendrites, respectively. Experimentally-based detailed biophysical models have shown that the key factor responsible for the accelerated EPSP propagation in human cortical dendrites is the large conductance load imposed at the soma by the large basal dendritic tree. Additionally, larger dendritic diameters and differences in cable and ion channel properties in humans contribute to enhanced signal propagation. Our integrative experimental and modeling study provides new insights into the scaling rules that help maintain information processing speed albeit the large and sparse neurons in the human cortex.
