Mingrone Alfred, Kaffman Ayal, Kaffman Arie
Department of Psychology, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, United States.
Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, United States.
Front Neurosci. 2020 Dec 17;14:618593. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2020.618593. eCollection 2020.
Large number of promising preclinical psychiatric studies in rodents later fail in clinical trials, raising concerns about the efficacy of this approach to generate novel pharmacological interventions. In this mini-review we argue that over-reliance on behavioral tests that are brief and highly sensitive to external factors play a critical role in this failure and propose that automated home-cage monitoring offers several advantages that will increase the translational utility of preclinical psychiatric research in rodents. We describe three of the most commonly used approaches for automated home cage monitoring in rodents [e.g., operant wall systems (OWS), computerized visual systems (CVS), and automatic motion sensors (AMS)] and review several commercially available systems that integrate the different approaches. Specific examples that demonstrate the advantages of automated home-cage monitoring over traditional tests of anxiety, depression, cognition, and addiction-like behaviors are highlighted. We conclude with recommendations on how to further expand this promising line of preclinical research.
大量在啮齿动物身上进行的、前景良好的临床前精神疾病研究后来在临床试验中失败，这引发了人们对这种生成新型药物干预方法有效性的担忧。在这篇小型综述中，我们认为过度依赖对外部因素高度敏感的简短行为测试在这种失败中起了关键作用，并提出自动笼内监测具有若干优势，将提高啮齿动物临床前精神疾病研究的转化效用。我们描述了啮齿动物自动笼内监测最常用的三种方法[例如，操作性壁系统（OWS）、计算机视觉系统（CVS）和自动运动传感器（AMS）]，并综述了几种整合了不同方法的商用系统。突出了一些具体例子，展示了自动笼内监测相对于传统焦虑、抑郁、认知和成瘾样行为测试的优势。我们最后就如何进一步扩展这一前景广阔的临床前研究方向提出了建议。
