24-Hour Home Cage Activity Monitoring in Mice

Protocol Steps

1. 1
   Place mice in monitoring cages

   Place each mouse individually into a 20 × 30 cm transparent cage positioned between the photo‑beam sensors.

2. 2
   Set automated lighting schedule

   Program the lighting to turn OFF at 19:00 (start of dark/active phase) and turn ON again at 07:00 the next morning.

3. 3
   Record and export beam‑break data

   Run continuous recording for 24 h, then stop data acquisition and export the beam‑break counts for each animal in 30‑minute bins.

4. 4
   Analyze activity by light/dark phase

   For each animal, sum the 30‑min bin counts into light‑phase (07:00–19:00) and dark‑phase (19:00–07:00) totals, then perform a two‑way ANOVA with genotype and phase as factors; healthy controls should show substantially higher activity in the dark phase.

   1. a.Sum 30‑min bin counts into light‑phase (07:00–19:00) and dark‑phase (19:00–07:00) totals for each mouse.
   2. b.Conduct a two‑way ANOVA with genotype and phase as factors.
   3. c.Confirm that dark‑phase activity exceeds light‑phase activity in control mice.

Materials & Reagents

Citation