• Overview
• Quality Assurance
• Anxiety
• Depression & Sexual Dysfunction
• Cognition & ADHD
• Psychosis & Mania
• Phenotyping & Breeding
• Other
  • in vivo Microdialysis
  • Neurological & Other Disorders
  • Neuromorphology
  • Obesity
  • Pain
  • Radiotelemetry
  • Index of Tests

Depression & Sexual Function

Anxiety and depression encompass a wide spectrum of disease states. Depression is the most prevalent psychiatric disorder characterized by a state of sadness, despair, discouragement, and hopelessness. Other symptoms may include apathy, withdrawal from social contact, an inability to experience pleasure, changes in appetite and sleep patterns, low energy levels, difficulty concentrating, and thoughts of suicide.

Key aspects of these disease states can be recapitulated in rodents in the following tests.

• Differential Reinforcement of Low Rate of Responding (DRL)
  DRL is an operant test used to measure motor impulsivity involving behavioral suppression and withholding of a response for a period or time. While DRL is sensitive to the effects of certain cognitive enhancers, the test also has predictive validity for antidepressant drugs.
• Forced Swim in Mice and Rats
  When rats or mice are forced to swim in a deep cylinder with tepid water they become nearly immobile and cease trying to escape. This characteristic immobile posture is thought to reflect a depressive-like state and is readily influenced by a wide variety of antidepressants.
  
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• Tail Suspension
  When mice are suspended by their tails, they become motionless which, as with the forced swim test, is thought to reflect a depressive-like state. This immobility is reduced by a large variety of clinically active typical and atypical antidepressants.
  
  
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• Olfactory Bulbectomy in Rats
  Removal of the olfactory bulb in rats is associated with variety of behavioral abnormalities including hyperactivity in the “open field” test. Chronic administration of antidepressants reduces the olfactory bulbectomy-induced hyperactivity in rats.
  
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• Sexual Behavior in Male and Female Rats
  If male rats are tested with an estrus female they display mounts, intromissions and ejaculations in a certain temporal distribution. Female sexual arousal is measured by receptive responses of the female to the male mounting. The well established quantitative measure, the lordosis quotient (LQ) is the percent of mounts on which the female sexual behavior, lordosis, occurs. Drugs can be tested to determine their effects (beneficial or detrimental) on the latency and frequency of these male and female sexual behaviors.
  
  
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