D_ABN

Infrastructure and User Services

The aim of the Dutch Animal Behavioural Neuroscience Infrastructure is to obtain knowledge and mechanistic insight into biological processes contributing to and interfering with brain and spinal cord function with high fundamental and/or translational value to humans. This facility specializes in rodent behaviour and nervous system research and it is open to researchers from academia and industry. The equipment that is offered ranges from basic equipment (open fields, rotarods, elevated plus maze, etc.) to complex automated test cages (e.g. (touchscreen) operant boxes, PhenoTyper, Laboras cage, CatWalk, Neurotar mobile homecage) and custom-made set-ups (e.g. Hexmaze, Robogator test, Social Ratpad, automated visible burying test, LiveRatTracker). 

The facility is also at the forefront of (neuro)technology development (e.g. wireless neurologgers) and (neuro)technology-intensive experiments (e.g. imaging, optic manipulations, telemetry, neurostimulation) to interrogate nervous system and physiological mechanisms and understand the link with behaviour. New technologies are close to operational, including acoustic camera-based tracking to assign vocalizations to individual animals, and to track individual animals in social groups in real-time. In addition, the facility offers a wide range of transgenic animal models to study specific biological processes (e.g. dopamine, serotonin or glutamate systems) or to model human diseases (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Leigh syndrome). 

Moreover, we have standardized models of antibody mediated disorders of the nervous system for preclinical drug studies. To ensure a high level of animal welfare, home cages with automated welfare monitoring systems are being developed. Finally, the facility offers expert guidance in project application and experimental design, fully equipped surgery rooms, and skilled personnel for a wide range of surgeries.

Examples/description of the type of research

The Dutch Animal Behavioural Neuroscience Infrastructure facilitates basic and translational animal behavioural neuroscience research as well as behavioural research relevant for other research domains (e.g. pain, physiology, ethology, metabolism, immunology, and animal welfare). Because technology is essential to track animal behaviour and measure and manipulate nervous tissue function, the facility is also relevant for experts in neurotechnology, sensor technology, computer vision and software engineering. We focus on high-accuracy behavioural and neural readouts for fundamental and translational research purposes. We actively try to enhance translational value by using arrays of behavioural readouts and implementing tasks that are as similar as possible to those applied in humans. We also aim to enhance translation by moving towards more naturalistic housing and testing of animals, allowing the animals to show more naturalistic behaviours. Specifically, we aim for automated semi-naturalistic homecages indoors and even outdoors where animals live in social groups, have sufficient space and are challenged with daily life events as would occur in the wild. 

Through automated behaviour tracking of each individual animal in a homecage setting human interference will be strongly reduced, further increasing research quality and welfare. The addition of wireless brain recording technologies will allow understanding of the link between brain and behaviour and further optimize the amount of data that we can obtain from each animal. These ways we improve science and welfare and reduce the number of animals needed. Finally, the facility will allow for replication of experiments at different sites to establish the reproducibility of findings. 

How to access the infrastructure?

1. Come to the facility (at one out of the five locations) to conduct the (sub) experiment in person. When the experiment has been started up, data acquisition can be followed remotely, and data is also accessible remotely. 
2. Receive access to the data that is needed to test the hypothesis as approved by the Access Request Board. 
3. Sign a paid contract with internal users of the facility to have the experiment conducted.