The Erasmus Ladder: a new tool for the automated measurement of motor performance and motor learning in miceA. Cupido, S.P. Krygsman, C.M. Snoeck, J.A.Th. Bos, C.I. De Zeeuw and S.K.E. KoekkoekDepartment of Neuroscience, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The NetherlandsRecent developments in the creation of mouse models for human diseases have called for tools that are able to quickly screen mutant mice for their deficits. In our department, we have developed two successful tools for detecting mouse mutants with cerebellar deficits: eye blink conditioning and VOR adaptation. However, for screening large amounts of mice these systems are too time consuming, as they require specialized and invasive surgery. Therefore we developed a new tool: The Erasmus Ladder. The Erasmus Ladder is a horizontal ladder with two cages. The horizontal ladder has 25 rungs. The rungs are divided in a left side and a right side. All subdivisions of the rungs are equipped with pressure sensors. The rungs can be automatically protracted and retracted. The mice are trained to walk with a constant speed from one cage to the other. We have developed software to analyze the walking pattern of the mice. In this presentation we will show quantitatively the level of the motor performance and motor learning of mice with cerebellar deficits. The advantages of the Erasmus Ladder are fourfold. First, the experiments do not require surgery; second, the Erasmus Ladder will be completely computer controlled, thus the experiments are not time consuming; third, the Erasmus Ladder has a feedback control, which allows us to modify the position of rungs during ongoing locomotion; fourth, with a few adjustments it is also possible to screen for hippocampal and amygdaloidal deficits. Paper presented at Measuring Behavior 2005 , 5th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, 30 August - 2 September 2005, Wageningen, The Netherlands. © 2005 Noldus Information Technology bv |