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Scaling law in free walking of mice in circular open fields of various diameters

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Abstract

Open-field tests are routinely used to study locomotor activity in rodents. I studied the effects of apparatus size on rodent locomotor activity, specifically with respect to how resting and walking periods are interwoven. I explored the open-field behavior of mice utilizing circular open fields of various diameters. When the diameter of the test apparatus was greater than 75 cm, the durations of the resting and moving periods of free walking behavior obeyed bounded power-law distribution functions. I found that the properties of the scaling exponents and model selection became similar for test apparatus diameters greater than 75 cm. These results can provide a guide for the selection of the size of the test apparatus for use in the study of the open-field behavior of rodents.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank K. Hanai for his technical assistance and K. Yoshii for his helpful comments. This research was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 26800225 and 15H01125.

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  1. Department of Physics, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-0823, Japan

    Hiroto Shoji

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  1. Hiroto Shoji
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Correspondence to Hiroto Shoji.

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Submitted to the Journal of Biological Physics on April 21, 2015

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Shoji, H. Scaling law in free walking of mice in circular open fields of various diameters. J Biol Phys 42, 259–270 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10867-015-9406-z

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