A Smart Wireless Homecage for High Throughput Longitudinal Animal Studies

描述(由申请人提供)：用于体内高吞吐量纵向动物研究的智能无线家庭电生理学(即，在活体动物受试者中)已成为研究动物神经系统功能组织的强大工具，以产生最终将有助于预防、诊断和治疗人类疾病和功能障碍的知识。它提供了从初级视觉皮质的组织到工作记忆的神经关联等领域的突破性信息，这有助于治疗从精神分裂症到癫痫再到抑郁症的各种疾病。许多实验问题，特别是在行为神经科学和神经假体技术的开发方面，需要对清醒自由行为的受试者进行长期实验，而后勤限制，如成本、寿命和住房，往往需要使用小动物，如啮齿类动物。这种方法的技术挑战可能会影响获得的数据的质量，其核心是找到方法来记录较长时间的数据，同时为受试者创造一个尽可能接近其自然栖息地的丰富环境。此外，这些实验是极其劳动密集型的，因此成本高昂。需要并行地从多个受试者自动收集数据，以便在最少人工干预的情况下进行统计验证。目前的提案描述了为克服这些挑战而开发和测试新技术的研究。我们建议开发一种新版本的EnerCage系统，这是一种感应供电的无线数据采集系统，用于对行为自由的小型动物对象进行电生理实验，其大小相当于标准家庭的大小。新的EnerCage-HC系统的主要优势是它将与现有的动物设施基础设施兼容，并允许研究人员在大量小动物身上并行进行长期实验，而不会占用它们宝贵的实验室空间，也不会让他们的高技能工作人员从事繁重的监测任务。EnerCage-HC系统的其他优点是为任何可能连接到或植入动物体内的电子仪器无线供电和通信，以记录生理参数、刺激神经系统或输送药物。因此，它不仅消除了电缆连接到动物身上造成的压力和系绳效应，防止了由于电线的缠绕和扭曲而将多个社交动物安置在一起，而且还缓解了动物携带其他无线解决方案所需的笨重电池有效负载的压力。EnerCage-HC系统还将能够准确跟踪固定在动物身上的磁性跟踪器的3-D位置和方向，这与光学方法不同，它不需要动物处于视线内。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A Smart Wireless Homecage for High Throughput Longitudinal Animal Studies In vivo electrophysiology (i.e. in live animal subjects) has been a powerful tool in studying the functional organization of the nervous system in animals to generate the knowledge that will eventually aid in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease and dysfunction in humans. It has provided groundbreaking information on areas ranging from the organization of primary visual cortex to neural correlates of working memory, which has helped in the treatment of disorders ranging from schizophrenia to epilepsy to depression. Many experimental questions, particularly in behavioral neuroscience and development of neuroprosthetic technologies, require long-term experiments on awake freely behaving subjects, and logistical constraints such as cost, lifespan, and housing often necessitate using small animals, such as rodents. The technical challenges to this approach, which can affect the quality of the acquired data, center on finding ways to record data for extended periods while creating an enriched environment for the subjects as close as possible to their natural habitat. Moreover, these experiments are extremely labor-intensive, and therefore, costly. There is a need to automate data collection from multiple subjects in parallel for statistical validation with minimum human intervention. The current proposal describes research to develop and test a new technology to overcome these challenges. We propose to develop a new version of the EnerCage system, an inductively-powered wireless data acquisition system for electrophysiology experiments on small freely behaving animal subjects, which is the size of a standard homecage. The key advantage of the new EnerCage-HC system is that it will be compatible with the existing animal facility infrastructure, and allow researches to run long-term experiments on a large number of small animals in parallel without occupying their precious laboratory space or engaging their highly- skilled staff in laborious monitoring tasks. Other advantages of the EnerCage-HC system are wirelessly powering and communicating with any electronic instrument that might be attached to or implanted in the animal subject body for recording physiological parameters, stimulating the nervous system, or delivering drugs. Therefore, it not only eliminates cable attachment to animals, which cause stress, tethering effect, and prevent housing multiple social animals together due to tangling and twisting of the wires, but also relieves the animals from carrying bulky battery payloads needed by other wireless solutions. The EnerCage-HC system will also be capable of accurately tracking the 3-D position and orientation of a magnetic tracer affixed to the animal body, which unlike optical methods does not require the animal to be in the line-of-sight.