The PhenoMAP™ approach has a number of distinct advantages over conventional behavioral test methods:

Higher quality - The PhenoMAP test environment, with food, drink, shelter and stimuli for testing cognition and anxiety, yields enriched features which stimulate various spontaneous behaviors and the adaptive abilities of the animal, resulting in more relevant answers to research questions. The system can measure behaviors resulting from the activation of multiple motivational systems, while allowing the animal to seek shelter or ignore stimuli. This represents a more natural situation than conventional one-dimensional tests.

Higher throughput – The PhenoMAP system is fully automated. An experiment involving dozens of test setups can be operated by a single person. Numerous animals and compounds can be screened in parallel. This greatly increases productivity and throughput.

Refinement - By observing the animals 24 hours a day, we optimize the use of animal resources. The PhenoMAP system measures through day and night, when rodents are most active. By allowing the animal to habituate to the home cage, behavioral effects are not obscured by novelty responses. Our advanced data analysis software takes full advantage of the large and complex data sets and extracts information that remains hidden with conventional methods.

Reliability - Lack of reliable and reproducibility within, and, even more, across laboratories is a well-known problem in behavioral research. The PhenoMAP platform is an answer to that problem: more objective, with fewer confounding factors. No more human handling and transportation between trials that may influence test results.

Flexibility – Test protocols can be designed and modified to address specific customer needs. New sensors, stimuli and software can be implemented to automate behavioral tests that have not been automated before.

Photo by: Annemarie Baars     

Animal welfare - Biologically relevant behavioral test paradigms imply animals in good shape, i.e. not stressed or impaired by a lack of stimulation and deprived of safety. The PhenoMAP concept avoids any strongly aversive conditions and is thus more animal-friendly than some conventional tests. Good animal welfare and good science go hand in hand.