Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
J Neurosci Methods. 2010 Apr 30;188(1):7-13. doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2010.01.021. Epub 2010 Jan 25.
The elevated plus maze (EPM) is one of the most widely used and established tests to assess anxiety-related behaviours and has been validated for use in both mice and rats. Although relatively quick and simple to conduct, there always exists the potential for observer bias during data collection. The KinderScientific EPM system uses a series of apparatus-embedded photobeams to collect spatiotemporal measures such as the amount of time spent in each zone of the maze (centre, open and closed arms), and the frequency of arm entries. Risk assessment behaviours, such as head dips and protected stretches, are also measured which represents a unique feature of this system over other automated EPM systems. We compared observer derived spatiotemporal and risk assessment measurements with automated generated data to test the reliability and accuracy of the automated system. Data were manually collected using different zone entry/exit criteria (2 vs. 4 paws). Automated data were generated using both the default zone map provided with the system and a user-modified zone map. We show that the automated EPM provides accurate and reliable measurements of both spatiotemporal and risk assessment behaviours. In addition, we show that the default zone map overestimated visually observed arm entries while our modified zone map generated data comparable to manually generated data using a 4 paws open arm entry criteria which is most consistently used to define arm entry in the literature. The KinderScientific automated EPM system represents a reliable tool for collection of a wide range of anxiety-related behavioural measures.
高架十字迷宫（EPM）是评估焦虑相关行为最广泛使用和成熟的测试之一，已被验证可用于小鼠和大鼠。尽管进行相对快速和简单，但在数据收集过程中始终存在观察者偏见的可能性。KinderScientific EPM 系统使用一系列仪器嵌入式光束来收集时空测量值，例如在迷宫的每个区域（中心、开放臂和封闭臂）中花费的时间量，以及臂进入的频率。风险评估行为，如头部下垂和受保护的伸展，也被测量，这是该系统相对于其他自动化 EPM 系统的独特之处。我们将观察者得出的时空和风险评估测量值与自动生成的数据进行了比较，以测试自动系统的可靠性和准确性。数据使用不同的区域进入/退出标准（2 只与 4 只爪子）进行手动收集。使用系统提供的默认区域图和用户修改的区域图自动生成数据。我们表明，自动 EPM 提供了时空和风险评估行为的准确可靠的测量。此外，我们表明，默认区域图高估了视觉观察到的臂进入次数，而我们修改的区域图生成的数据与使用 4 只爪子开放臂进入标准手动生成的数据相当，该标准最常用于文献中定义臂进入。KinderScientific 自动化 EPM 系统是一种可靠的工具，可用于收集广泛的焦虑相关行为测量值。
