The influence of housing on cognition and emotional regulation in mice presents a problem for the study of genetic and environmental risk factors for neuropsychiatric disorders: standard laboratory housing may result in low levels of...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Factors leading to the harmful consumption of substances, like alcohol and sucrose, involve a complex interaction of genes and the environment. While we cannot control the genes we inherit, we can modify our environment. Understanding...
This study was aimed at discovering if C57BL/6J and BALB/c mice have a preferred type of enrichment. The findings will help identify the right type of enrichment for each strain and ultimately aid in keeping...
Pre- and post-surgical care includes providing the animals with a soft version of their standard Irradiated diet. Food pellets are soaked in sterile water and this turns into a mash. This ensures that the animals...