JoVE | Peer Reviewed Scientific Video Journal

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Recent Advancements and Modifications in Rodent Behavioral Testing

Guest Editors

Rabab Sayed

Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University

<p>Dr. Sayed has over ten years of experience in experimental pharmacology. She has been an associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Cairo University's Faculty of Pharmacy since 2015. Her studies focus on neuroscience and behavioral pharmacology. She has co-authored 27 international publications with a Scopus H-index of 11. She also works as an Assistant Director of International Relations at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University. She participates in establishing international research projects and partnerships, organizing international scientific conferences and workshops, and communicating relevant information to the faculty community on international funding opportunities and international collaborative projects. She works as a Director of the Animal Facility in the Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University, and as a member of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), Cairo University, Egypt.</p>

Ahmed Seif Kamel

Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University

<p>Dr. Kamel is a lecturer in pharmacology and toxicology. He is vice chairman of the Animal Facility of the Faculty of Pharmacy and a researcher in the Aya Alaa lab in the Biomedical Sciences Institute, Zewail City of Science and Technology. Dr. Kamel is a renowned pharmacologist with over 13 years of teaching experience at several universities, in addition to his research publications in eight mid-tier journals in the last three years. He is also a reviewer for high-impact journals. He is interested in several fields, such as diabetes, neurodegenerative disorders, molecular neuropharmacology, and neuroscience. Dr. Kamel participates in projects from Erasmus and the National Research Center of Egypt in collaboration with universities from Egypt, the UK, Malta, and Sweden. His emerging research focuses on the close relationship between rodents and human behaviors to maximize drug effect evaluation in preclinical studies.</p>

Collection Overview

Behavioral testing in rodents is used to evaluate traits such as sensory-motor function, depressive-like behavior, anxiety-like behavior, social interaction, memory, and many others. While behavioral tests are a vital part of neurological assessments, they also belong to the group of the most challenging experiments.

Neurological disorders pose a large global burden on the healthcare system. Although neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) may present with specific clinical patterns, patients often show vague symptom complexes. The vague pathophysiology of these neurological disorders and their multifaceted consequences urge the need for the design and development of novel behavioral tests to overcome this problem.

Overall, this collection aims to highlight the recent advancements and modifications in rodent behavioral testing. We believe that sharing this knowledge will assist the scientific community in developing reliable and validated methods to investigate multiple facets of animal models of neurological disorders.