Behavior of lab rodents is typically studied in a dedicated enviroment separate from the animal's home cage. This separation is typically responsible for low throughput and significant variation in data, both within a lab and between labs. With EthoVision XT and PhenoTyper home cage assessment, the two environments are integrated to fully automate multiple behavioral paradigms.

• Assess behavioral dynamics and circadian rhythmicity continuously and during long periods of time.
• Save time and avoid variation in data caused by human interventions.
• Perform multiple measurements in parallel or in a row.
• Determine baseline and experimentally-induced behavior in one and the same environment.
• Assess multiple animals simultaneously for equal time conditions and enhanced throughput.
• Collect behavioral data that is not masked by stress responses due to animal handling or confrontation with a novel apparatus.

Introduction
Behavior of laboratory rodents is often studied in well-controlled, short experiments at arbitrary moments during the day. Tests typically take place in an apparatus that is separate from the animal’s home cage and usually focus on specific responses to stimuli presented inside. These conditions can make the assay crude and results are often difficult to interpret. Testing animals in their home cage has several advantages; it allows for observations over consecutive days, limits handling and transport of the animals, and takes the complex interactions between different motivational systems into account.

PhenoTyper® allows you to overcome the problems associated with typical tests, and obtain a more elaborate understanding of behavior. The system integrates the test and home cage environment by automatically executing the measurements and tests within the home cage.

How it works
PhenoTyper home cages are ideally operated by an EthoVision® XT system. Each PhenoTyper home cage provides a home cage environment for a mouse or rat, with the availability of bedding, a shelter, and food and water supply. The PhenoTyper home cage also contains infrared (IR) sensitive video equipment. Optionally, you can add the Noldus lickometer for the recording of drinking behavior. Measuring locomotor, drinking, and eating behavior allows for a baseline evaluation of activity levels and rhythmicity of these behaviors displayed during multiple circadian cycles.

Apart from recording the animal’s spontaneous behaviors, the Pheno- Typer home cage further contains integrated light and sound stimuli and can be equipped with a pellet dispenser. At any time, the animal can be confronted with these stimuli according to highly sophisticated, user definable protocols. These protocols include time and behavior dependent conditions, Boolean operators, and randomize functions to create interactions between the animal and its environment. These interactions can include anxiety induced approach or avoidance behavior, or reward or punishment induced learned behaviors. Because the animal is assessed inside the PhenoTyper home cage for days in a row, multiple trials can be programmed in advance. For example, teach an animal that it will receive a food reward if it goes into a specific zone in the cage as soon as the light inside the cage is turned on, or when it approaches an illuminated zone that surrounding the food station.

Each PhenoTyper home cage operates automatically for several days in a row without any human intervention. You can easily connect multiple PhenoTyper cages to EthoVision XT. Connect up to four cages using a quad unit and the Noldus USB-IO box. A multitude of such systems allow multiple animals to be assessed simultaneously to establish standardized and productive experiments.