Quantitative ways to animalsÂ’ behavior
Date
Tuesday, January 21, 2020 10:00 - 10:30
Speaker
Fabio Canneva (Baxalta Innovations (now part of Takeda))
Location
Seminar Room, Lab Building East
Series
Seminar/Talk
Tags
Life Sciences Seminar
Contact
Similarly to how symptoms are investigated by a physician in search for the root causes of a disease, likewise animals behavioral repertoire constitutes to scientists the first-hand source of data relative to the animal model investigated. Using such data requires for it to be objectively investigated, quantitatively described and finally analyzed in a statistically-sound fashion.
Although mice and rats cannot speak to us, their body language and behavioral choices are plenty informative: with the combination of advanced technological tools and an understanding of the ethological principles of rodents behavior we can effectively start monitoring disease symptoms and drug effects before any biological sample is collected from the animals.
With a few examples from my own research I would like to present my view on the role of curiosity in cognition, the importance of motivation, reward and timing in operant conditioning, the basic and advanced approaches to motoric analysis and the peculiarities of home-cage testing, rodents communication and pain display.