Extending WAAVES+: An animal and environment-agnostic, automated USV scoring platform for high-throughput social, behavioral, and neuropharmacological studies

Project SummaryUltrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are known to reflect emotional processing, brain neurochemistry and brain function - key observations in animal model studies. Collecting and processing USV data is time-intensive, manual, and costly. Most importantly, it limits researchers’ ability to employ fully effective, and nuanced experimental designs, and is a barrier to entry for other researchers. Automated tabulation of rodent vocalization data would reduce cost and enable researchers to fully explore mechanisms through multi-hour, multi-session studies. Addressing this limitation will enhance the efficiency of research and could accelerate new mental health advancements.Our overall goal is to serve a community-wide need for superior, automated USV scoring - alleviating the manual burden of USV analyses while facilitating and enhancing rodent- and mouse-based emotional processing research. Our specific objectives are to (a) develop an environment-agnostic, automated USV scoring tool that works “out-of-the-box” without extensive tailoring or environment-specific training sets; (b) automate call classification and expand the parameterization of acoustic properties to provide researchers with additional data for investigating significant and behaviorally-relevant outcomes.This work will eliminate the cost and time barrier associated with USV-based research while simultaneously expanding the quantity of relevant data. We conservatively estimate an annual cost savings in the $100Ks, if not $1Ms. This work will form the foundation of a product that will enhance research throughput, reduce treatment development time and cost, and allow researchers to design and implement more complex experimental designs accelerating advancements addressing mental health disorders.Project NarrativeUltrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are known to reflect emotional processing, brain neurochemistry and brain function - key observations in animal model studies; however, collecting and processing USV data is time-intensive, manual, and costly. Our overall goal is to serve a community-wide need for superior, automated USV scoring - alleviating the manual burden of USV analyses while facilitating and enhancing rodent- and mouse-based emotional processing research for cost-effective, high-throughput social, behavioral, and neuropharmacological studies impacting wide-ranging research including mental health.