Rodent behavioral testing has been used to study brain functions since the 1890s and has become a gold-standard model in modern neuroscience. Up to the 1950s, most behavioral tests on laboratory rodent models were based on punishments and rewards. Both approaches can lead to a certain degree of animal pain or suffering. Punishments involved the employment of painful stimuli, typically electric shocks. Passive avoidance and fear conditioning tests, among the most widely used behavioral paradigms used to evaluate learning and memory in rodents, can be performed using only a single brief shock. Other tests, such as the active avoidance, might require up to tens or hundreds of shocks, strongly challenging the psychological welfare of the model animals. On the other hand, tests based on rewards, which apparently may seem more ethical, actually still induce suffering in the animals, as food rewards are almost always associated with a food restriction protocol, in order to motivate food-seeking behavior. Rodents are starved for days before starting the test and kept under food restriction for the whole duration of the test. The distress during the testing session is only a minimal part compared to the stress lived outside of the testing session, which is prolonged and continuous. Analogously, liquid rewards commonly rely on a previous water restriction protocol to use thirst as motivation.
Animal stress is not only an ethical issue per se, but also an important factor potentially impacting on the reliability and reproducibility of experimental results.
To overcome this issue, several behavioral tests avoiding punishment or rewards have been designed and adopted to investigate learning and memory processes and complex social behaviors. These are based on rodents’ spontaneous behaviors. For instance, in Boissier and Simon’s 16-hole-board, or File and Wardill’s 4-hole-board, mice are induced to look under a set of holes on a board simply by their natural curiosity. In Ennaceur and Delacour’s object recognition test mice are exposed to objects, which are spontaneously explored based on their novelty. In the object location test, the displacement of an object is used to create a source of novelty and hence induce higher levels of exploration. Maze examples are the spontaneous alternation T-maze and the continuous alternation Y-maze. Finally, a radically innovative approach is behavioral testing of rodents in their home-cage, as IntelliCage, which excludes any interaction with the experimenter or exposure to external testing contexts.
The goal of this Research Topic is to gather further insights on novel animal-friendly testing approaches within neuroscientific research, promoting the development and use of animal-friendly testing alternatives whenever available and applicable.
We welcome research articles and reviews adopting and/or exploring animal-friendly methods of behavioral testing, including, but not limited to, the following:
• motor tests based on free physical activity (e.g., voluntary wheel running, open-field locomotion test or gait analysis systems as CatWalk)
• cognitive tests relying on spontaneous behaviors (as object exploration)
• home-cage testing
• tests using non-painful disincentives (e.g., simple air-puffs) or incentives not associated with previous aversive situations
• non-harmful methods as ultrasonic vocalization recording to infer cognition and emotion during exploration, socialization, parental behavior, courtship, and mating
• non-aversive handling techniques.
Rodent behavioral testing has been used to study brain functions since the 1890s and has become a gold-standard model in modern neuroscience. Up to the 1950s, most behavioral tests on laboratory rodent models were based on punishments and rewards. Both approaches can lead to a certain degree of animal pain or suffering. Punishments involved the employment of painful stimuli, typically electric shocks. Passive avoidance and fear conditioning tests, among the most widely used behavioral paradigms used to evaluate learning and memory in rodents, can be performed using only a single brief shock. Other tests, such as the active avoidance, might require up to tens or hundreds of shocks, strongly challenging the psychological welfare of the model animals. On the other hand, tests based on rewards, which apparently may seem more ethical, actually still induce suffering in the animals, as food rewards are almost always associated with a food restriction protocol, in order to motivate food-seeking behavior. Rodents are starved for days before starting the test and kept under food restriction for the whole duration of the test. The distress during the testing session is only a minimal part compared to the stress lived outside of the testing session, which is prolonged and continuous. Analogously, liquid rewards commonly rely on a previous water restriction protocol to use thirst as motivation.
Animal stress is not only an ethical issue per se, but also an important factor potentially impacting on the reliability and reproducibility of experimental results.
To overcome this issue, several behavioral tests avoiding punishment or rewards have been designed and adopted to investigate learning and memory processes and complex social behaviors. These are based on rodents’ spontaneous behaviors. For instance, in Boissier and Simon’s 16-hole-board, or File and Wardill’s 4-hole-board, mice are induced to look under a set of holes on a board simply by their natural curiosity. In Ennaceur and Delacour’s object recognition test mice are exposed to objects, which are spontaneously explored based on their novelty. In the object location test, the displacement of an object is used to create a source of novelty and hence induce higher levels of exploration. Maze examples are the spontaneous alternation T-maze and the continuous alternation Y-maze. Finally, a radically innovative approach is behavioral testing of rodents in their home-cage, as IntelliCage, which excludes any interaction with the experimenter or exposure to external testing contexts.
The goal of this Research Topic is to gather further insights on novel animal-friendly testing approaches within neuroscientific research, promoting the development and use of animal-friendly testing alternatives whenever available and applicable.
We welcome research articles and reviews adopting and/or exploring animal-friendly methods of behavioral testing, including, but not limited to, the following:
• motor tests based on free physical activity (e.g., voluntary wheel running, open-field locomotion test or gait analysis systems as CatWalk)
• cognitive tests relying on spontaneous behaviors (as object exploration)
• home-cage testing
• tests using non-painful disincentives (e.g., simple air-puffs) or incentives not associated with previous aversive situations
• non-harmful methods as ultrasonic vocalization recording to infer cognition and emotion during exploration, socialization, parental behavior, courtship, and mating
• non-aversive handling techniques.
