Malatynska Ewa, Pinhasov Albert, Crooke Jeffrey J, Smith-Swintosky Virginia L, Brenneman Douglas E
Drug Discovery, CNS Research, East Coast Research and Early Development, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, L.L.C., Spring House, PA 19477, USA.
J Neurosci Methods. 2007 Sep 30;165(2):175-82. doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2007.05.035. Epub 2007 Jun 15.
Technical variants of mania and depression models that were based on dominant-submissive relationships (DSR) have been analyzed and compared in the present paper. In these paradigms, one animal of a pair developed the behavioral trait of dominance while the other submissiveness in a food competition test after repeated interactions in a specially designed apparatus. Data collection methods and timelines have been compared in variants of the DSR-based models. In addition, different selection criteria to assign dominant or submissive status to animals and two different scoring systems were evaluated. The importance of the selection criteria for DSR stability has been emphasized. Our data showed that (1) only animals selected with the strict criteria form clear dominant and submissive relationships that hold throughout the study period, (2) submissive animals were influenced by fluoxetine and dominant animals were influenced by sodium valproate similarly in pairs scored by human observer and by a video-tracking system. These studies indicate that the model variant using stringent selection criteria and automatic scoring was the most reliable for use in depression-related studies.
