Extending WAAVES+: An animal and environment-agnostic, automated USV scoring platform for high-throughput social, behavioral, and neuropharmacological studies

扩展 WAAVES：一个与动物和环境无关的自动化 USV 评分平台，用于高通量社会、行为和神经药理学研究

• 批准号: 9983191
• 负责人: Catherine Ashley
• 金额: $ 45.25万
• 依托单位: CORNERSTONE RESEARCH GROUP, INC.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-08-01 至 2021-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9983191
• 关键词: Acoustics; Address; Affect; Animal Model; Animals; Behavioral; Brain; Characteristics; Classification; Code; Communities; Complex; Cost Savings; Data; Data Set; Detection; Emotional; Environment; Experimental Designs; Foundations; Frequencies; Goals; Hand; Hour; Human; Individual; Libraries; Manuals; Measurement; Mental Health; Mental disorders; Mus; Outcome; Pathway interactions; Phase; Property; Rattus; Research; Research Personnel; Rodent; Study models; Techniques; Technology; Testing; Time; Training; Ultrasonics; Work; base; cholinergic; computing resources; cost; cost effective; design; experimental study; interest; negative affect; neural circuit; neurochemistry; neuromechanism; showing emotion; social; successful intervention; therapy development; tool; vocalization

Project Summary Ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are known to reflect emotional processing, brain neurochemistry and brain function - key observations in animal model studies. Collecting and processing USV data is time-intensive, manual, and costly. Most importantly, it limits researchers’ ability to employ fully effective, and nuanced experimental designs, and is a barrier to entry for other researchers. Automated tabulation of rodent vocalization data would reduce cost and enable researchers to fully explore mechanisms through multi-hour, multi-session studies. Addressing this limitation will enhance the efficiency of research and could accelerate new mental health advancements. Our overall goal is to serve a community-wide need for superior, automated USV scoring - alleviating the manual burden of USV analyses while facilitating and enhancing rodent- and mouse-based emotional processing research. Our specific objectives are to (a) develop an environment-agnostic, automated USV scoring tool that works “out-of-the-box” without extensive tailoring or environment-specific training sets; (b) automate call classification and expand the parameterization of acoustic properties to provide researchers with additional data for investigating significant and behaviorally-relevant outcomes. This work will eliminate the cost and time barrier associated with USV-based research while simultaneously expanding the quantity of relevant data. We conservatively estimate an annual cost savings in the $100Ks, if not $1Ms. This work will form the foundation of a product that will enhance research throughput, reduce treatment development time and cost, and allow researchers to design and implement more complex experimental designs accelerating advancements addressing mental health disorders.

项目摘要 超声波发声（USV）被认为反映了情绪处理、脑神经化学和脑功能。 功能-动物模型研究中的关键观察结果。收集和处理USV数据是时间密集型的， 手工制作，而且很贵。最重要的是，它限制了研究人员充分有效地利用 实验设计，是其他研究人员进入的障碍。啮齿动物自动制表 发声数据将降低成本，并使研究人员能够在数小时内充分探索机制， 多时段研究。解决这一限制将提高研究的效率，并可能加快 心理健康的新进展。 我们的总体目标是满足整个社区对上级自动USV评分的需求-减轻 USV分析的手动负担，同时促进和增强基于啮齿动物和小鼠的情感 加工研究。我们的具体目标是（a）开发一种与环境无关的自动化USV 评分工具，“开箱即用”，无需大量定制或环境特定的培训集;（B） 自动化呼叫分类并扩展声学特性的参数化，为研究人员提供 用于调查重要和行为相关结果的额外数据。 这项工作将消除与USV研究相关的成本和时间障碍，同时 扩大相关数据的数量。我们保守估计，如果 不是1 M。这项工作将形成一个产品的基础，将提高研究吞吐量，减少 治疗开发时间和成本，并允许研究人员设计和实施更复杂的 实验设计加速解决精神健康障碍的进展。

项目成果

Acoustilytix™: A Web-Based Automated Ultrasonic Vocalization Scoring Platform.

• DOI: 10.3390/brainsci11070864
• 发表时间: 2021-06-29
• 期刊: Brain sciences
• 影响因子: 3.3
• 作者: Ashley CB;Snyder RD;Shepherd JE;Cervantes C;Mittal N;Fleming S;Bailey J;Nievera MD;Souleimanova SI;Nyaoga B;Lichtenfeld L;Chen AR;Maddox WT;Duvauchelle CL
• 通讯作者: Duvauchelle CL