Home Cage System for Fine Motor Assessments in Aging Rodent Models

Project Abstract In this Phase I proposalVulintusIncproposes to develop and testOmniHomea wirelessself contained home cage system for assessing fine motor function in rodentsCurrent methods for longitudinally assessing skilled motor function in aging rodent models are labor intensivetime consuming to administer frequently over long timescalesand stressful to the animalThe proliferation of new rodent genetic models for motor diseases in which age is a primary risk factorsuch as Parkinson s diseaseHuntington s diseaseand adult onset muscular dystrophiesadds new urgency to the need to develop more efficient methods for phenotyping motor functionOmniHome will reduce experimenter supervision and daily test administration requirements to a minimumallowing researchers to more efficiently track fine forelimb function in rodent models while minimizing animal stress and confounding variability from experimenter handling Project Narrative Current methods for longitudinally assessing skilled motor function in aging rodent models are labor intensive and time consuming to administer frequently over long timescalesThe proliferation of new rodent genetic models for motor diseases in which age is a primary risk factor adds new urgency to the need to develop more efficient methods for phenotyping motor functionFor this Phase I SBIR projectVulintusIncproposes to develop and validateOmniHomea self contained home cage rodent forelimb assessment system capable of unsupervised administration of operant skilled motor tasks