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Developing an Automated Method for Measuring Drinking in Mice Using an Intellicage System
The development of new treatments for alcoholism is markedly hindered by a number of factors. Most notably is the lack of a good model for validating lead compounds, a fact compounded by the length of time required to perform the currently employed models.  The current standard models of alcohol-seeking utilize rats in a variety of paradigms which relate to various aspects of consumption and relapse.  The most widely used animal models are 2 bottle choice drinking, which measures preference, and operant self administration and reinstatement, for incentive motivation, consumption and relapse.  These models have proven to be valuable tools for dissecting and understanding the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the behaviors associated with alcohol consumption and seeking, however time consuming.

We are in the process of developing a more rapid model of drinking that measures drinking continuously to determine drinking preference, number of drinking bouts, time of drinking bouts and their modulation by treatments.  We have recently purchased a newly available technology, the IntelliCage System from NewBehavior (Figure 1), which may provide the key to developing an automated high throughput, high content preclinical primary screening tool in mice.  The IntelliCage system provides a novel technology for assessing and continuously monitoring drinking bouts and measuring candidate treatment effects on drinking behaviors in a fully automated way.  In addition to its capabilities for measuring continuous drinking, it was originally developed to measure behaviors in a social context and has three main learning tasks; spatial or place learning, discriminative learning and operant learning.  Additionally, the system can operate continually during days and weeks or at set times of day.

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Figure 1. The IntelliCage system purchased from NewBehavior.

Purpose of Project

Whilst initially developed to study learning and memory we are adapting the technology and developing it into an efficient screening tool for testing lead compounds, target validation using transgenic mice, and RNAi knockdown studies examining brain-region specific alterations in alcohol-associated drinking behaviors.