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Microtus oeconomus --- Voles --- Wildlife conservation

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Cage stereotypies--abnormal, repetitive, unvarying and apparently functionless behaviours--are common in many captive animals, sometimes resulting in self-injury or decreased reproductive success. However, a general mechanistic or neurophysiological understanding of cage stereotypies has proved elusive. In contrast, stereotypies in human mental disorder, or those induced by drugs or brain lesions, are well understood, and are thought to result from the disinhibition of behavioural selection by the basal ganglia. In this study, we found that the cage stereotypies of captive bank voles also correlate with signs of altered response selection by the basal ganglia. Stereotypic bar-mouthing in the caged voles correlated with inappropriate responding in extinction learning, impairments of response timing, evidence of a knowledge-action dissociation, increased rates of behavioural activation, and hyperactivity. Furthermore, all these signs intercorrelated, implicating a single underlying deficit consistent with striatal disinhibition of response selection. Bar-mouthing thus appears fundamentally similar to the stereotypies of autists, schizophrenics, and subjects treated with amphetamine or basal ganglial lesions. These results represent the first evidence for a neural substrate of cage stereotypy. They also suggest that stereotypic animals may experience novel forms of psychological distress, and that stereotypy might well represent a potential confound in many behavioural experiments.

Abnormal behaviour. --- Activation. --- Amphetamine. --- Animal welfare. --- Animal. --- Animals. --- Autism. --- Bank vole. --- Bank voles. --- Bar mouthing. --- Basal ganglia. --- Brain. --- Cage. --- Disinhibition. --- Disorder. --- Distress. --- Drug. --- Drugs. --- Executive functioning. --- Experience. --- Experiment. --- Experiments. --- Extinction. --- Human. --- Hyperactivity. --- Impairments. --- Laboratory. --- Learning. --- Lesion. --- Lesions. --- Reproductive success. --- Response. --- Rodent. --- Rodents. --- Schizophrenia. --- Selection. --- Self-injury. --- Sign. --- Stereotypic. --- Stereotypies. --- Stereotypy. --- Striatal dysfunction. --- Success. --- Vole. --- Voles.

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The present study evaluated whether environmental enrichment-related effects on the development of stereotyped behavior in deer mice were associated with alterations in neuronal metabolic activity. Deer mice were reared under either enriched or standard housing conditions for 60 days following weaning. All mice were then placed in automated photocell detectors and classified as either stereotypic or non-stereotypic. Neuronal metabolic activity was then assessed using cytochrome oxidase (CO) histochemistry. The results demonstrated that environmental enrichment significantly increased neuronal metabolic activity in the motor cortex. Furthermore, non-stereotypic mice exhibited significantly more CO activity than stereotypic mice in the cortex, striatum, nucleus accumbens, thalamus, hippocampus and amygdala. This latter effect was due to the enriched mice as evidenced by a significant interaction between housing condition and behavioral status in the cortex, striatum, nucleus accumbens, thalamus and hippocampus. Thus, the observed increase in CO activity reflected increased neuronal metabolic activity in non-stereotypic enriched mice relative to stereotypic enriched mice. These results suggest that, in a developmental model of spontaneous stereotypy, the enrichment-related prevention of stereotyped behavior is associated with increased CO activity. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

Accumbens. --- Activity. --- Amygdala. --- Bank voles. --- Basal ganglia. --- Behavior. --- Brain variations. --- Cortex. --- Cytochrome oxidase,repetitive behavior,mouse,brain. --- Cytochrome-oxidase activity. --- Deer mice. --- Deer. --- Development. --- Enriched. --- Enrichment. --- Environmental enrichment. --- Hippocampus. --- Housing conditions. --- Housing. --- Increase. --- Interaction. --- Lurcher mutant. --- Macaque striate cortex. --- Mice. --- Model. --- Motor coordination. --- Neuronal. --- Nonhuman-primates. --- Nucleus accumbens. --- Nucleus-accumbens. --- Nucleus. --- Prevention. --- Quantitative em analysis. --- Stereotyped behavior. --- Stereotypic. --- Stereotypies. --- Stereotypy. --- Striatum. --- Visual-cortex. --- Weaning.