IntelliCage

Features

• In depth screening of individual experimental animals in a social context
• Up to 16 animals per cage, efficient testing, high throughput
• Maximal standardization and reproducibility
• Minimal human intervention, high validity
• Fully automated task performance
• Broad variety of accessible data
• Flexible design of paradigms

Application

• Cognitive Function
• Operant conditioning

Disease models

• Addiction
• Alzheimer´s
• Anxiety
• Autism
• Depression
• Schizophrenia

The IntelliCage, a fully automated system allows you to assess the home cage behavior and cognitive performance of up to 16 individual mice or 8 rats separately while they are living in a social environment. This unique experimental setup fosters natural social behavior in a biologically relevant, enriched but highly standardized home cage context. In this way, the IntelliCage minimizes the need for handling and human intervention, increasing task validity, data reproducibility, and ensuring a high level of animal welfare.

RFID transponder-tagged animals are individually recognized in the fully automated conditioning corners that evaluate spontaneous behavior, operant/associative learning, and memory. The four corners are equipped with sensors (continuous 24h-recording of behavioral events) and actors (allowing the system to feedback on animals’ behavior in a pre-defined way). Together with the software package using a programmable user interface, this unique sensor/actor principle grants direct behavioral shaping of group-housed animals in an all-in-one system according to diverse research interests. The visually designed paradigms run fully automated, allowing for efficient continuous testing and monitoring of large experimental animal cohorts.

To date, IntelliCage data have been published in more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, among them publications in PNAS, Molecular Psychiatry or Nature Communications. The IntelliCage allows a transfer of validated behavioral paradigms into an automated setup, serving as a complement to usual behavioral testing procedures.

Intellicage can be used with several other TSE devices, running wheel, satellite cages, PhenoWorld, connected through Animal gate, which recognizes designated RFID transponder tagged animals to provide access to the respective connected social box.