Assessment of neonatal rat's activity by the automated registration of the animal entries in the squares of a testing arena.

Automated registration of neonatal rat entries in the squares of a testing chamber is suggested for the animal locomotion assessment. This method allows detection of paddling and pivoting activities that are not accompanied by forward movement of the animal. The proposed technique is also relatively insensitive to nonlocomotor changes in a pup's body position, such as breathing and shaking, and thus offers a selective detection of locomotor-related activity. The application of the method permits the evaluation of spontaneous and stimulated motor activity of neonatal rats using relatively short test duration and a minimal number of animals.