Abstract
The simplest approach to quantifying animal behavior begins by identifying a list of discrete behaviors and observing the animal’s behavior at regular intervals for a specified period of time. The behavioral distribution (the fraction of observations corresponding to each behavior) is then determined. This is an incomplete characterization of behavior, and in some instances, mild injury is not reflected by statistically significant changes in the distribution even though a human observer can confidently and correctly assert that the animal is not behaving normally. In these circumstances, an examination of the sequential structure of the animal’s behavior may, however, show significant alteration. This contribution describes procedures derived from symbolic dynamics for quantifying the sequential structure of animal behavior. Normalization procedures for complexity estimates are presented, and the limitations of complexity measures are discussed.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the Naval Medical Research Center. I also acknowledge support from the Traumatic Injury Research Program of the Uniformed Services University. The opinions and assertions contained herein are the private ones of the authors and are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the Navy Department or the naval service at large.
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Rapp, P.E. Quantitative characterization of animal behavior following blast exposure. Cogn Neurodyn 1, 287–293 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-007-9027-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-007-9027-8