A novel system for simultaneous monitoring of locomotor and sound activities in animals

This paper describes a PC-based system for simultaneous monitoring of locom otor and sound activities on small rodents. The displacement and location s ignals of the animal were first determined across consecutive video-frames, followed by marked data reduction to cater for long-term studies. At the s ame time, sounds generated by the animal were detected and the sound level was recorded as root-mean-square values at 1 s intervals. Preliminary data showed that such a multi-parametric monitor system could provide comprehens ive information on the animal's activity. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. Al l rights reserved.