Neuropsychopharmacological methods Flashcards
Why do we need to measure the behaviour of a whole organism?
End result: to find treatments and cures for diseases of the cns.
need to be tested on whole organism in order to check for therapeutic value and unwanted side effects
Name the 9 types of behaviour we are interested in measuring?
- Fear
- Anxiety
- Attention
- Depression
- Locomotor activity
- Locomotor coordination
- Learning
- Memory
- Sensory perception
Clinical relevance of fear testing?
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Phobias
Clinical relevance of anxiety testing?
A product of most of the other conditions
Clinical relevance of attention testing?
Schixophrenia
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Clinical relevance of depression testing?
Bipolar disorder
Clinical relevance of Locomotor activity testing?
Parkinson’s disease
Clinical relevance of locomotor coordination testing?
Huntington’s chorea
Clinical relevance of learning testing?
Autistic spectrum disorders
Clinical relevance of memory testing?
Alzheimer’s disease
Clinical relevance of sensory perception testing\?
Pain sensitivity in parkinson’s disease
Chronic pain
How do we test for fear?
Cued or contextual fear conditioning
How do we test for anxiety?
Elevated plus maze
Light/dark maze
How do we test for attention?
Attentional set-shifting task
How do we test for depression?
Learned helplessness
Fear?
Cued: make a sound and a shock is given. Make the sound again they freeze in fear (even if shock isnt given).
Cotentual: animal only given shock in specific environment. Tell if it generalises being put in a box with the shock or just the box with the texture
Anxiety?
4 corridors: 2 enclosed and 2 light.
Normal rats want to be in the enclosed corridors. After a while, will inspect the light corridors.
Anxiety rats will spend more time in the enclosed corridors.
Attention?
Can do it with cards on humans or on food bowls for rodents.
On cards: get the person to sort the cards by colour, number and shape. Change the rule during it and see how long it takes for them to adapt.
On food bowls: change the texture, stuff inside and colour of the bowl.
Depression?
Forced swim test: Put the animal in a beaker of water (not to stress the animal out)- so the animal cant climb out.
Will try and swim but eventually helplessness sets in and will just float there (not trying to get out or swim)
Tail suspension test: hold rat by their tail: they will try and climb up their own body to get the right way up. Will just dangle there if helplessness.
Locomotor activity
A box with lots of laser beams so you can measure the rats movement.
Can measure how fast the rat is moving, when is it moving, how much time does it spend rearing and the distane it travels.
It a passive experiement: does not force the rat to do it.
Locomotor coordination?
rotarod: Tests muscle strength and coordination. Rotating tube- the rodant must move in order to stay up- can increase speed.
Reaching test: has to reach through a small gap to collect food. If they are hungry beforehand, can measure how much food they collect in a period of time.
Balace beam: Slops upwards: motivation to try and persuaded the rat to walk up. Balance beam. Beam get narrower to the top. Can monitor how often its feet slips off the side.
Memory?
Rodents will spend more time at the novel object.
if it spends the same amount of time at each- can say it doesnt remember seeing the last object.
If it can associate seeing the object in a particular texture room
Sensory perception?
Von Frey test: set of little filaments each bend at different pressures. Apply to the feet of mouse- eventually at a particular pressure the animal will move it foot. Chronic pain sufferers will move their foot at a lower pressure.
Temperature sensitvity: can identify the temperatre the animals gets to before it starts moving and licking its paws to cool down.
