Modified SHIRPA 

Purpose

To observe and evaluate general health and neurological functions.

Description

Modified SHIRPA is a very basic behavioural battery that includes measuring muscle, cerebellar, sensory, neuropsychiatric and autonomic functions.

The subject is run through a battery of tests that can be completed within several minutes. These tests include observation for a variety of normal and abnormal spontaneous behaviours, and measurements of activity levels, arousal, respiration, gait, muscle tone, reflexes, aggression, etc.  If a subject group shows unusual behaviour or function in one or more of the tests, further testing can be done in that domain.  More detail about the modified SHIRPA can be found in the following paper: Rogers DC et al. (1997) "Behavioural and functional analysis of mouse phenotype: SHIRPA, a proposed protocol for comprehensive phenotype assessment" Mammalian Genome 8, 711-713.