Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science

Behavioral Assays

The Rodent Behavioral Phenotyping Core (RBPC) occupies a 1083 sq ft workroom and offers a wide variety of behavioral assays.

  • Locomotor activity (Open Field and Chronic home-cage monitoring)
  • Anxiety-like behavior (Elevated-Zero Maze, Open field, Novelty-Induced Hypophagia, Novelty-Suppressed Feeding, and Light/Dark Box)
  • Learning and Memory (Contextual and Cued Fear conditioning, Extinction Learning, Morris Water Maze, Novel Object Location, Novel Object Recognition, Y-Maze, Barnes Maze, and Radial Maze)
  • Depressive-like behavior (Forced Swim, Learned Helplessness, Social Defeat, Restrain Stress, Variable Foot Shock, Tail Suspension, Sucrose Preference)
  • Homecage Behaviors (Grooming, Feeding, Drinking, Locomotion, Climbing, and Rearing)
  • Social Behavior (Social Novelty, Social Interaction, Resident Intruder, Social Place Preference)
  • Olfactory Function (Olfactory Cross-habituation and Olfactory Generalization)
  • Sensory Function (Hotplate, Shock Threshold, Automated Von Fray Filaments for mechanical testing, thermal plantar testing or Hargreaves test)
  • Motor Function (Accelerating Rotarod, wire-hang test, Grip Strength, and Gait Analysis).

The RBPC also offers the capability to adapt our equipment to the research needs of PIs.