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Enemy avoidance task: a novel behavioral paradigm for assessing spatial avoidance of a moving subject.

Petr P Telensky, Jan J Svoboda, Eva E Pastalkova, Karel K Blahna, Jan J Bures, and Ales A Stuchlik

J Neurosci Methods 180(1):29-33 (2009) PMID 19427526

Navigation with respect to moving goals represents a useful ability in the everyday life of animals. We have developed a novel behavioral paradigm, "enemy avoidance task", in which a laboratory rat (subject) was trained to avoid another rat (enemy), while searching for small pasta pellets dispensed onto an experimental arena. Whenever the distance between the two animals was smaller than 25 cm, the subject was given a mild electric footshock. The results have shown that rats are capable of avoiding another rat while exploring an environment. Therefore, the enemy avoidance task can be used in electrophysiological, lesion or neuropharmacological studies exploring neuronal substrate coding for egocentric and allocentric positions of an observed animal.

Copyright © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

DOI: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2009.02.010
Version: za2963e q8za7 q8zbf q8zcb q8zd0 q8zea q8zf8 q8zgf

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