Time an animal remains on an accelerating or fixed-speed rotating rod before falling, passive rotation, or task-defined failure.
Use rotarod latency when the study needs a motor coordination, balance, fatigue, or motor-learning readout. The endpoint is strongest when rod diameter, surface, acceleration profile, training exposure, cutoff, and failure rule are fixed before testing.
| Primary value | Elapsed time from rod start to fall or task-defined failure |
|---|---|
| Common units | Seconds, often capped at a maximum trial duration |
| Compatible assays | Accelerating rotarod, fixed-speed rotarod, motor learning, cerebellar or basal-ganglia models |
| Required boundary | Rod speed profile, cutoff, failure rule, and training schedule |
| Do not infer alone | Specific motor pathway, motivation, sedation, or learning without companion measures |
Record each trial separately before averaging. Define whether passive rotation, gripping without walking, jumping, or stepping onto lane dividers counts as failure, because these rules can change latency independently of coordination.
Shorter latency can support impaired balance or coordination, but body weight, grip strategy, anxiety, fatigue, sedation, prior training, rod texture, and acceleration calibration can all shift values.
Store animal ID, trial number, rod diameter, surface texture, starting speed, acceleration ramp, maximum speed, cutoff, latency, failure type, training day, inter-trial interval, and exclusion notes.
Endpoint pages should cite the method literature behind the scored value and keep high-specificity protocol claims qualified unless the source supports them.
Endpoint articles link to adjacent products, software workflows, and sibling endpoints where the connection is useful and already routable.
