Bioseb has developed a really simple-to-use and miniature actimetry system. The instrument uses vibrations from within the cage to measure the locomotion and includes exhaustive functions to quantify rodent activity over short or long periods of time. It is usually set over 24 hours to quantify the activity over a single circadian cycle.

With a very competitive pricing for 1 to 8 cages, it is a "must" when you need to simply quantify the locomotor phenotype of your mice and rats. The ACTIVMETER allows the accurate measurement of the rodent's activity in its familiar environment using the animal's ‘Home Cage' (including grid, pellets and bottle), and it can also be used in any other kind of environment (open field, etc.).

How does it work?

Very different from other techniques, our new actimeter "ActiV-Meter" does not require any kind of surgical implantation on the animal (mouse or rat), does not involve any kind of modification to the home cage, and is not disturbed by any change (like litter movements) in the cage environment. Other actimeter systems, like the Infra-red beams and the video image analysis monitoring, are really not usable with litter, not very accurate in spatial definition and cannot detect small movements and subtle behaviors, e.g. the “tremor”. Unlike them, the ActiV-Meter is using an actimetry technique similar to the force based actometers, but does not require the use of specific cages and statistical algorithms which make other activity measurement systems very expensive to set up and use in daily practice.

Benefits

The originality of the ACTIVMETER from Bioseb lies in its ability to quantify 3 parameters of animal behaviour:
• Movement
• Motionless Activity (including tremor)
• Immobility
Among other advantages, this actimeter is characterized by its ease of use, the fact that the activity measurement can take place in the Home Cage as well as in Open Field, and that the animal, mouse or rat, is unrestrained during the experiment. Using food and a bottle, activity measurement experiments can be conducted over a very long period of time.

In addition to these features, Bioseb's ACTIVMETER incorporates a very unique benefit by also measuring the activity when the animal walks or hangs under the wire mesh cover grid (especially useful for mice), giving a true idea of the aptitude and ability of the mice to navigate under a wire mesh grid. The assessment of this aptitude might suggest further evaluation of sensorimotor abilities of the model, using classical tests like the rotarod, the grip test, etc.

The operator of the actometer can define his own immobility standard as well as the thresholds between slow motion and fast motion. During the actimetry experiment, the operator can visualize on the screen the real-time activity type, position and motion, as well as the parameters measured during each sampling period for each animal (mouse or rat). The operator can also mark special behaviour types using a notepad application and keyboard shortcuts (ethological keyboard). Raw acquisition data files are stored in a proprietary format to meet GLP standards, while a .txt version can be used for further activity analysis.

All of this at a fraction of the usual price of other actimeter systems and with a much easier setup.

Measured Parameters

Results can be sent directly to MS Excel and/or exported in .txt format. Measured parameters are:
• Immobility time (sleeping or freezing periods), defined with a specific threshold
• Motionless activity duration (the animal is awake but not moving in the cage, for example while eating or scratching…)
• Animal movement: distance (given in cm) and duration, possibility to split between slow motion and fast motion duration. Also available when the mice navigate under a wire mesh grid
• Average speed of the animal (mouse or rat), calculated using moving period of time
• Rearing can be detected and counted especially useful when working in an open field. The ACTIVMETER can count the number of "rearings" and measure the cumulative time
• All parameters can be changed by the operator and the experiment replayed later using different threshold values.

Applications & research fields

Bioseb’s new actimeter for rodents (rats and mice) is especially useful for following applications and research fields:
• General phenotyping
• Neurodegenerative diseases
• Myopathy diseases
• Global locomotor activity associated to radio telemetric measurements
• Studies on Circadian rhythms and associated troubles
• Models used to study psychiatric diseases such as STOP null mice showing disorganized activity and hypersensitivity to stressed event
• Recovery on partial SCI models
• And much more...


BIO-ACTIV Software for actimetry data acquisition and data replay

!New! Publication:

Bioseb team presents its respectful thanks to research teams of Prof. David (Université Paris-Sud) and Prof. Samuels (Columbia University, New York), who used the Activ_Meter (Actimeter for Rodents) during their recent studies:

Behavioral Effects of Fluoxetine in an Animal Model of Anxiety/Depression Are Mediated by Both Neurogenesis-Dependent and -Independent Mechanisms, by DJ. David, BA. Samuels, Q. Rainer, JW. Wang et al., in Neuron, 62, 2009
(Click here to download this article as a PDF file)