Tenascin-C (TnC) is an extracellular matrix glycoprotein implicated in a variety of processes ranging from brain development to synaptic plasticity in the adult vertebrates. Although the role of the TnC gene in regulation of behavior...
Judgement bias tests of animal affect and hence welfare assume that the animal’s responses to ambiguous stimuli, which may herald positive or negative outcomes, are under instrumental control and reflect ‘optimism’ or ‘pessimism’ about what...
The development of modern housing regimes such as individually ventilated cage (IVC) systems has become very popular and attractive in order to reduce spreading of pathogenic organisms and to lower the risk to develop a...
Previous research has shown that rats reared in simple/impoverished environments demonstrate greater repetitive responding for sensory reinforcers (e.g., light onset). Moreover, the brains of these rats are abnormally developed, compared to brains of rats reared...
Background: Addiction is a chronic disease characterized by persistent vulnerability to relapse during abstinence. In animal models of addiction, accumulating evidence suggests that exposure to environmental enrichment (EE) during periods of abstinence can have curative...
The aim of the present review is to discuss how housing conditions affect behavioral performance in laboratory rodents from an ethological view. Commonly used laboratory rodents such as rats and mice, are originally captured animals...
Strong social support can negate negative health outcomes – an effect defined as ‘social buffering’. In the present study, using the socially monogamous prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster), we examined whether the presence of a bonded...
A host of scholarly work has characterized the positive effects of exercise and environmental enrichment on behaviour and cognition in animal studies. The purpose of this study was to investigate the uptake and longitudinal impact...
Some experts suggest that sedation of laboratory rodents with isoflurane before euthanasia with carbon dioxide (CO2) is a humane alternative to euthanasia with CO2 alone, but little research has compared aversion with these agents. Albino...
Enrichment studies with rodents have demonstrated that cage enhancements can improve animal welfare and performance on common behavioral measures, but few studies have compared more than one type of enrichment or controlled for confounds, and...