Behavioral neuroscience

Introduction Quantitative gait analysis is considered a keystone for diagnosis and development of therapies for neurological disorders —including Parkinson’s disease (PD), Huntington disease (HD), and spinal cord injury (SCI) —because it provides objective, reliable and rater-independent measures of mobility.1 Brain damage often results in impairment in gait and balance. These impairments are a leading cause […]

INTRODUCTION The common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is widely used in neuroscience. Although minute in size, the brain of Drosophila melanogaster supports sophisticated behaviors, making it a powerful model for studying learning and memory [1]. One innovative method is the Heat Maze, which helps researchers analyze how flies adapt to their environment [2]. Although paradigms […]

INTRODUCTION Stroke is a leading cause of disability and death worldwide, with over 13.9 million new cases occurring each year.1 Although timely interventions such as thrombolysis and thrombectomy have significantly reduced mortality, acute treatments are limited by narrow therapeutic windows, leaving millions with long-term disabilities.2 Conventional behavioral tests in rodents are widely used to assess […]

If your lab uses AnyMaze by Stoelting, your projects are almost certainly stored in a proprietary .amz file. That works fine inside AnyMaze, but it creates problems when you need to share results, archive experiments, or comply with the NIH Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Policy. ConductVision .amz file NIH data conversion solves this challenge […]

For behavioral science labs funded by the NIH, converting data into open, shareable formats is no longer optional. It’s mandatory. But what happens when your data lives in a .nod file, the proprietary format used by EthoVision XT? Here’s your go-to guide for understanding .nod files, the roadblocks they pose for data sharing, and how […]

In the quest to quantify cognition, timing is everything. Among the metrics that define executive performance in behavioral neuroscience, Correct Response Latency (CRL), the time it takes to make the right choice after a stimulus—is a powerful and revealing tool. In the context of the Zebrafish 5-Choice Maze, this metric offers a real-time readout of […]

The Zebrafish 5-Choice Maze stands at the frontier of translational neuroscience. Modeled after the Five-Choice Serial Reaction Time Task (5-CSRTT), this maze is a precision-engineered platform for evaluating core cognitive functions such as sustained attention, learning, stimulus recognition, and inhibitory control. At the heart of this complex behavioral assay lies a deceptively simple yet profoundly […]

Understanding how learning unfolds is just as important as proving that learning occurs. In the field of behavioral neuroscience, trial-to-trial improvement offers a window into the process of memory acquisition, attention, and task engagement. Especially in zebrafish studies using the Visual Water Maze, tracking performance across sequential trials provides invaluable insight into the moment-by-moment progression […]

What Wall-Hugging Behavior Reveals About Anxiety and Cognitive Performance In behavioral neuroscience, the path a subject avoids is often as telling as the path it chooses. Within the context of zebrafish research using the Visual Water Maze, one such behavior—thigmotaxis, or wall-hugging—is especially revealing. Although sometimes dismissed as an artifact or a peripheral behavioral quirk, […]