The rodent Activity Wheel represents a very simple and clever way to register animal physical activity in its home cage environment.

The use of this high throughput tool is particularly relevant for research involving circadian rhythms, phenotyping and drug testing.

Basically the animals are housed individually in the home cages equipped with the running wheel. The total number of wheel rotation made by the animal is displayed on the external LE907 individual counter or LE3806 multicounter devices.

LE3806 multicounter allows storing the data in userdefined time intervals. The data can be visualized directly from the multicounter display and/or exported to the SeDaCom PC interface (through RS 232 serial port) in a format compatible with Excel. The new SEDACOM 2.0 version (not included with the LE3806 multicounter) provides an easy and convenient way to visualize and export the data (number of total rotations by user-defined interval of time) on a computer for further analysis.

The components of the wheel assembly are used with standard polycarbonate rodent cages provided with their wire lid. The wheel is built outside the home cage to preserve animal life space.

Most of the non-electrical cage components are autoclavable.

NEW! Compatible with experiments using tethered animals.

The social interaction test by pairs provides a popular and standard paradigm to study general social behavior.

This test allows the experimental subject to freely explore an unfamiliar congener in its home cage or in a neutral environment. Social exploration is measured by the time spent by the experimental subject around the congener as well as the amount and duration of behaviors that compose social interaction (e.g. sniffing, following, grooming, biting, mounting, wrestling, etc). Social avoidance behavior is used in a wide variety of models, for instance for assessing neophobia anxiety and depression-like behaviors.

Our social box provides an ideal experimental environment to conduct social interaction tasks. The box is divided in three interconnected compartments. Sliding doors are available for confining the animal in one specific compartment during the test. In standard experiments, two grid enclosures containing “stranger” animals are placed in the box allowing a close interaction with the animal tested (as well as protection in case one of them manifests strong aggressive behavior).

Two models are availables for rats and mice. All our model are now compatible with experiments using tethered animals.

The automatic TST system for the tail suspension test allows a fast and reliable screening of the psychotropic properties (anti-depressants, sedatives) of drugs. 

Basically, the measuring principle is based on the energy developed by mice trying to escape from their suspension. During the test, the movements of the mice are analysed in terms of force, energy and power developed over time.

The system includes the suspension cages (3 mice per cage) and a user-friendly software to run, record, analyse and replay the experiments. The results are either printed or stored in .txt or.xls files formats.

The Y maze is commonly used for assessing spatial working memory in rats and mice, especially for spontaneous alternation tasks.

The tasks using a Y maze are simple tasks that can be run in both rats and mice. The mazes are made of non-reflective and odor resistant material well suited for any video-tracking system. The mazes are provided in a grey color floor, walls and manual sliding doors.

The Panlab Y mazes can be associated with the SMART Video-Tracking Systems for detection and analysis of animal displacements and behavior throughout the test.

The standard zero plus maze is a variation of the elevated plus maze used to assess anxiety-like behavior in small laboratory animals (rat/mice). 

In this task, the conflict between the innate fear that rodents have of open areas versus their desire to explore novel environments is exploited. Security is provided by the closed arms whereas the open arms offer exploratory value. When anxious, the natural tendency of rodents is to prefer enclosed dark spaces to opened brightly lit spaces. In this context, anxiety-related behavior is measured by the degree to which the rodent avoids the unenclosed areas of the maze. 

The Panlab zero maze is a cycling corridor elevated above the floor and provided with two open areas and two closed areas. The maze is made of odour-resistant black perpex material with no-reflective colour for eliminating any glare. 

The elevated zero maze can be used with a video tracking system such as the Panlab SMART video-tracking software. The maze is provided with a set of gray floor for optimizing the detection of darker animals in this context. 

The T maze is commonly used for assessing spatial working memory in rats and mice, especially for delayed alternation tasks. The tasks using a T maze are simple tasks that can be run in both rats and mice.

The Panlab T mazes are made of non-reflective and odor resistant material well suited for any video-tracking system. The mazes are provided with a back color floor and grey walls (including an additional set of grey floors and 3 doors).

The Panlab T mazes can be associated with the SMART Video-Tracking Systems for detection and analysis of animal displacements and behavior throughout the test.

The Barnes maze is a popular test for assessing spatial learning and memory in rats and mice.

To begin the test the animal is placed on top of the Barnes maze platform, a brightly lit environment consisting of a fixed number of holes around its periphery. In such an open environment, rodents naturally seek a dark enclosed surrounding, which is provided in the form of a dark box (goal box) under one of the round holes around the perimeter of the platform. The amount of time required for the animal to locate the goal box using visuo-spatial cues surrounding the maze periphery is measured by the researcher.

Unlike the Radial maze and Watermaze test the Barnes maze does not require dietary restrictions or swimming stress, making it a useful alternative for behaviorally phenotyping genetically modi! ed mice and rats.

Panlab provides different models of Barnes mazes for rat and mouse, with different floor color and goal/false box options:

• Basic Barnes maze includes: 1 or 2 floor colors, rotating floor, 1 goal box (fixed location) and 1 starting cylinder
• Full/Flexible Barnes maze includes: 3 floor colors, rotating floor, 1 starting cylinder, 1 goal box and the corresponding number of false boxes. Additional goal boxes can be used for more advanced memory tasks (to be purchased separately). Goal/false boxes can be freely positioned beneath any hole.

MAZESOFT-8 is complete and easy-to-use software for monitoring radial maze experiments. It has been specially designed to work with the Panlab radial maze apparatus equipped with rows of infrared photocells for the automated detection of animal position. 

The software allows for the full control of the arm doors either manually (by means of a button panel in the computer screen) or automatically, when a trained subject is being tested.

MAZESOFT-8 allows the user setting any of the standard protocols for the study of working and reference memory in laboratory animals. The protocols are easy to configure, the user only have to enter some important parameters: designation of the baited arms, conditions to stop the experiments, time-interval between each trial, doors monitoring mode, criterion for considering the arm visited… Each protocol configuration can be saved and opened for use when necessary. A “trial header” can be used for recording all the necessary information associated with the current experiment (code of trial, experimenter, challenge, dose, subject identification, comments).

In MAZESOFT-8, the maze is virtually divided into 17 sections: 8 equally sized arms (each one divided into proximal and distal section) and a central area. One experiment can be composed of several trials, depending on the number of experimental groups and animals per group used in the study. The system considers an arm being visited when the subject has been detected in the distal part of the arm. During each trial, the elapsed time, permanence time in each area and current position of the animal can be visualized in real-time. Real-time information about the animal position and the number of visits made are also graphically shown on the screen. A Runtime data panel shows the cumulated number of working and reference memory errors together with other important data (response latency, number and list of visits and entries into the arms etc…)

MAZESOFT-8 provides a summary data table containing the complete information about each session (subject name, group, date) together with all the integrated data of interest. The tables of session can be re-organised before exportation according to parameters previously entered in the trial header (by subjects, by groups, by experimenter, etc.). Data from the summary data base as well as the detailed chronological listing of the animal positions for each session can be easily exported to Excel.

ActiTrack controls data coming from up to 32 IR frames. It discriminates and analyses frequency and number of IR beam breaks to convert it in a track file that can be analysed later for generating reports. Thus ActiTrack provides much more integrated and precise data in terms of animal activity, position, displacements and rearings than those provided by the SeDaCom software.

The Vogel test is a conflict test has become a standard for fast screening the potential anxiolytic properties of drugs. In this procedure, the drinking behavior is punished by mild electrical shocks leading to a significant reduction of water consumption in deprived animals. Drinking responses are then reestablished by drugs with anxiolytic properties. 

The Panlab Vogel test consists of a standard home cage associated with a grid floor. An electronic unit associated with a special nipple ensures the detection and counting of the licks reflecting the animal drinking behavior. Using an exclusive nipple design, any casual and non-specific contacts of the animal with the nipple will not be considered as a drinking response. 

A multi-cage configuration allows performing the Vogel test for up to 32 cages. The cages are associated with a link box (1 for each 8 cages) ensuring the functional interaction between the lick sensor system, the LE10025 Shock generator (1 per cage) and the PackWin software for advanced protocol configuration and data acquisition. 

The interconnection among the cages and the computer is carry out by a RS 232 serial communication. Such a configuration allows performing the test on a Laptop.