Abstract
Running wheels for mice residing in the home cage are useful for the continuous measurement of locomotor activity for studies testing exercise interventions or exercise-induced effects on brain and metabolism. Here, we have developed an open source, printable, open-faced running wheel that is automated to collect locomotor information such as distance travelled, wheel direction, and velocity that can be binned into epochs over 24 h or multiple days. This system allows for remote data collection to avoid human interference in mouse behavioural experiments. We tested this system in an activity-based-anorexia procedure. Using these wheels, we replicate previous findings that food restriction augments wheel running activity.
Significance statement
Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is a psychiatric disease with few treatments and a high mortality rate. It is important to better understand the biology to accelerate the development of new therapies. The most used animal model to study AN is the activity-based anorexia model, which measures physical activity during food restriction. We have developed open source running wheels that allow for continuous measurement of activity for multi-day experiments and demonstrated efficacy in the activity-based anorexia model.
Footnotes
Authors report no conflict of interest.
This work was supported by a Mathison Centre for Research and Education research initiative (Finding Treatments for Eating Disorders to GD, FPM, and SLB), an NSERC Discovery grant (DG-343012 / DAS-04060 to SLB) and a Canada Research Chair (950-232211). NG was supported by a Harley N. Hotchkiss Doctoral Scholarship.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.
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