An open-source device for measuring food intake and operant behavior in rodent home-cages
Abstract
Feeding is critical for survival and disruption in the mechanisms that govern food intake underlie disorders such as obesity and anorexia nervosa. It is important to understand both food intake and food motivation to reveal mechanisms underlying feeding disorders. Operant behavioral testing can be used to measure the motivational component to feeding, but most food intake monitoring systems do not measure operant behavior. Here, we present a new solution for monitoring both food intake and motivation in rodent home-cages: The Feeding Experimentation Device version 3 (FED3). FED3 measures food intake and operant behavior in rodent home-cages, enabling longitudinal studies of feeding behavior with minimal experimenter intervention. It has a programmable output for synchronizing behavior with optogenetic stimulation or neural recordings. Finally, FED3 design files are open-source and freely available, allowing researchers to modify FED3 to suit their needs.
Data availability
The FED3 device is open-source and design files and code are freely available online at: https://github.com/KravitzLabDevices/FED3. In addition, we have made all data and analysis code for this paper available at https://osf.io/hwxgv/.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institutes of Health (ZIADK075099)
- Bridget Alexandra Matikainen-Ankney
- Mohamed Ali
- Amy K Sutton
- Katrina P Nguyen
- Michael J Krashes
- Alexxai V Kravitz
National Institutes of Health (DA049924)
- Meaghan C Creed
Whitehall Foundation (2017-12-54)
- Meaghan C Creed
Rita Allen Foundation
- Meaghan C Creed
Brain and Behavior Research Foundation
- Meaghan C Creed
- Alexxai V Kravitz
Washington University Diabetes Research Center
- Bridget Alexandra Matikainen-Ankney
- Thomas Earnest
- Eric Casey
- Alex A Legaria
- Alexxai V Kravitz
Washington University Nutrition Obesity Research Center
- Kia M Barclay
- Makenzie R Norris
- Yu-Hsuan Chang
- Meaghan C Creed
National Institutes of Health (R00DA038725)
- Ream Al-Hasani
National Institutes of Health (R01NS117899)
- Jordan G McCall
McDonnell Center for Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology
- Bridget Alexandra Matikainen-Ankney
National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia
- Zane B Andrews
National Institutes of Health (DK108742)
- Bridget Alexandra Matikainen-Ankney
National Institutes of Health (DA047127)
- Meaghan C Creed
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: 166 C57Bl/6 mice were housed in a 12-hour light/dark cycle with ad libitum access to food and water except where described. Mice were provided laboratory chow diet (5001 Rodent Diet; Lab Supply, Fort Worth, Texas). All procedures were approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee at Washington University in St Louis, the National Institutes of Health, Williams College, Virginia Tech and Monash University.
Copyright
This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.
Metrics
-
- 1,021
- downloads
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Neuroscience
Our propensity to materiality, which consists in using, making, creating, and passing on technologies, has enabled us to shape the physical world according to our ends. To explain this proclivity, scientists have calibrated their lens to either low-level skills such as motor cognition or high-level skills such as language or social cognition. Yet, little has been said about the intermediate-level cognitive processes that are directly involved in mastering this materiality, that is, technical cognition. We aim to focus on this intermediate level for providing new insights into the neurocognitive bases of human materiality. Here, we show that a technical-reasoning process might be specifically at work in physical problem-solving situations. We found via two distinct neuroimaging studies that the area PF (parietal F) within the left parietal lobe is central for this reasoning process in both tool-use and non-tool-use physical problem-solving and can work along with social-cognitive skills to resolve day-to-day interactions that combine social and physical constraints. Our results demonstrate the existence of a specific cognitive module in the human brain dedicated to materiality, which might be the supporting pillar allowing the accumulation of technical knowledge over generations. Intensifying research on technical cognition could nurture a comprehensive framework that has been missing in fields interested in how early and modern humans have been interacting with the physical world through technology, and how this interaction has shaped our history and culture.
-
- Neuroscience
The question as to whether animals taste cholesterol taste is not resolved. This study investigates whether the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is capable of detecting cholesterol through their gustatory system. We found that flies are indifferent to low levels of cholesterol and avoid higher levels. The avoidance is mediated by gustatory receptor neurons (GRNs), demonstrating that flies can taste cholesterol. The cholesterol-responsive GRNs comprise a subset that also responds to bitter substances. Cholesterol detection depends on five ionotropic receptor (IR) family members, and disrupting any of these genes impairs the flies' ability to avoid cholesterol. Ectopic expressions of these IRs in GRNs reveals two classes of cholesterol receptors, each with three shared IRs and one unique subunit. Additionally, expressing cholesterol receptors in sugar-responsive GRNs confers attraction to cholesterol. This study reveals that flies can taste cholesterol, and that the detection depends on IRs in GRNs.