Noldus and Sylics combine forces for automated behavioral screening

WAGENINGEN, Netherlands - Oct. 26, 2015 - PRLog -- Wageningen, The Netherlands - Noldus Information Technology recently signed a strategic partnership agreement with Sylics, a contract research organization based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. With both companies providing innovative solutions for preclinical neuroscience, this partnership opens up new opportunities for integrated and automated behavioral screening for scientists worldwide.

Integrated solution

Noldus and Sylics combined forces and developed a complete solution consisting of PhenoTyper® home cage monitoring, EthoVision® XT video tracking, and AHCODA™ testing protocols and cloud-based data analysis. This facilitates the 24/7 assessment of cognition, anxiety, and motor function in rodents in a home cage environment, guarantees high quality data, and provides comprehensive graphs and statistics.

New CognitionWall

This partnership also entails the reselling of the CognitionWall™ by Noldus as a new add-on for the PhenoTyper home cage. The CognitionWall was designed and validated by researchers at Sylics for sophisticated cognitive tests, such as discrimination and reversal learning. These tests can be used for rapid, sensitive, and reproducible assessment of cognitive impairments in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.

Research advances

PhenoTyper is an instrumented cage that can be used for home cage testing, allowing prolonged studies and minimal or no handling of animals prior to testing. EthoVision XT software provides the tracking and activity recording of the animals, and delivers an extensive data set. For straight-forward testing (such as activity, locomotion, etc.), data selection and statistical analyses provided by EthoVision XT suffice, but for a more sophisticated analysis of rodent behavior, AHCODA provides the ideal solution. It can be used to dissect spontaneous behavior in great detail, evaluate cognitive function and anxiety, and other disease-specific behavioral parameters. This makes the complete solution of Noldus and Sylics particularly suited for the integral analysis of many behavioral parameters with the aim to detect behavioral effects induced by genetic mutations, chemical compounds and environmental manipulations.

Examples and demonstrations

Examples of research can be found at www.sylics.com and www.noldus.com. The system will also be demonstrated at BIO Europe (Munich, 2-4 November).

EthoVision XT

EthoVision XT is renowned video tracking software that has been on the market for over twenty years and is validated in thousands of peer-reviewed publications. Its core function is to track rodents via 3 body points (nose point, center, and tail base) as the animal moves through any arena or environment. From these coordinates, a wealth of behavioral, location-based parameters can be calculated. In addition, EthoVision XT functions at the core of many labs as it is able to integrate other signals and control hardware equipment for sophisticated test protocols.

PhenoTyper

PhenoTyper is an instrumented cage that facilitates the testing of animals in a home cage environment. This offers several advantage over standard cages, such as prolonged testing opportunities and limited handling of the animals. It incorporates a camera for video monitoring and tracking with EthoVision XT. It comes equipped with a variety of stimuli such as lights and audio. Several add-ons are available, such as automated pellet dispensers, running wheel (counts the number of rotations), lick-o-meters that monitor drinking behavior, and more. All PhenoTyper hardware can be connected to EthoVision XT for programming and receiving data.

AHCODA

AHCODA is a data analysis service that converts raw tracking data from automated home cages into readily interpretable data sets including all relevant behavioral parameters. Therefore, it provides a standardized, practical, and rapid solution for the analysis of complex behavioral data sets into meaningful results. Furthermore, validated AHCODA testing protocols allow detailed assessment of cognition, anxiety and activity patterns in PhenoTyper home cages.

CognitionWall

The CognitionWall was designed for the development of operant cognitive tests in PhenoTyper home-cages. The CognitionWall is a wall with three entrances, placed in front of a reward dispenser. Combined with real-time video tracking in EthoVision XT to drive the reward dispenser, it forms the basis for operant cognitive tasks developed by Sylics.

Noldus Information Technology

Noldus Information Technology develops and delivers innovative software and hardware solutions and services for the measurement and analysis of behavior to empower scientists worldwide to advance their research, develop products, train and educate. Noldus has offices across Europe, North America, and China and is represented by a worldwide network of distributors.

Sylics

Sylics offers innovative research solutions for preclinical neuroscience and is specialized in developing and implementing standard and automated behavioral tests for neurological and psychiatric diseases, with a strong focus on neurodegeneration and schizophrenia.