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Emotional transition and nonstructural changes in mouse models of autism
Nováková, Rozálie ; Kubik-Zahorodna, Agnieszka (advisor) ; Bendová, Zdeňka (referee)
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by repetitive behaviour and impairments in social behaviour and social communication. The whole aetiological heterogeneity is still not fully elucidated. It is then very important to focus on experimental research, especially on animal models, to help with drug development and recovery. To broaden the variability of focus of behavioural tests on mouse sociability, a new modification of a test to assess transfer of emotional information was proposed. A similar test was published recently for the first time, but it is still not common to use it in mice. Results show that it is possible to measure transfer of fear between conspecifics only during their immediate direct encounter through behavioural evaluation, but not in further standardised anxiety-evaluating tests. Self-grooming behaviour was the only parameter significantly affected by transferred anxiety in the experimental setup used, and therefore should be considered as the most sensitive behavioural parameter describing animal emotional state. However, the variability in individual animal behaviour is still considerably large, which confounds the results to a great degree. Such a behavioural test for transfer of emotional information may be especially useful in...
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Application of new methods and technologies in mice models of autism research
Nováková, Rozálie ; Kubik-Zahorodna, Agnieszka (advisor) ; Telenský, Petr (referee)
Autism Spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting around 2 % of the world's population. The underlying pathology is still unknown, but it seems that this disorder might be caused by a complex combination of genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors. ASD individuals suffer not only from repetitive behavior, abnormal social behavior and impaired communication but also from many comorbid disorders. ASD mouse models offer a deeper insight into the pathology of ASD, possibly leading to the development of treatments, or even a cure. Since there are over a thousand risk-genes for ASD, and therefore many ASD mouse models, there is an increased pressure to develop new, effective, and more automatized behavioral assays. Two examples of this would be Intellicage and Digitally Ventilated Cage (DVC), where an explicit advantage to these systems is that they can both function as a home cage. Intellicage is a fully-automized home cage designed for the high-throughput and long-term investigation of spontaneous behavior and cognitive abilities of mice, and DVC, a standard IVC cage continuously measuring a mouse's activity. These may become useful tools not only for animal models of Autism Spectrum Disorder, but all studies involving behavioral assays.
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Application of new methods and technologies in mice models of autism research
Nováková, Rozálie ; Kubik-Zahorodna, Agnieszka (advisor) ; Telenský, Petr (referee)
Autism Spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting around 2 % of the world's population. The underlying pathology is still unknown, but it seems that this disorder might be caused by a complex combination of genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors. ASD individuals suffer not only from repetitive behavior, abnormal social behavior and impaired communication but also from many comorbid disorders. ASD mouse models offer a deeper insight into the pathology of ASD, possibly leading to the development of treatments, or even a cure. Since there are over a thousand risk-genes for ASD, and therefore many ASD mouse models, there is an increased pressure to develop new, effective, and more automatized behavioral assays. Two examples of this would be Intellicage and Digitally Ventilated Cage (DVC), where an explicit advantage to these systems is that they can both function as a home cage. Intellicage is a fully-automized home cage designed for the high-throughput and long-term investigation of spontaneous behavior and cognitive abilities of mice, and DVC, a standard IVC cage continuously measuring a mouse's activity. These may become useful tools not only for animal models of Autism Spectrum Disorder, but all studies involving behavioral assays.
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