[Digital registration and analysis of visual information in behavioral experiment]

A new software for recording, registration and computer analysis of behavior of laboratory animals, EthoStudio, has been developed. The software allows the latency, number and duration of up to 10 behavioral patterns to be simultaneously registered with parallel recording of video on a hard disk. The video records can be played back to track animal locomotion using a computer. EthoStudio was applied to study mouse behavior in the open field test. The numbers of rearings and groomings as well as accumulated time of grooming were interactively assayed by pressing and holding buttons on a computer keyboard. The number of squares crossed, the number of entries into the center and the time spend therein were assayed by computer analysis. EthoStudio can be applied to objectively study various kinds of animal behavior with reliability and accuracy necessary for modern ethological, physiological and pharmacological experiment.