Open Field

Purpose

To assess ambulation.

Description

This test measures a combination of locomotor activity, exploratory drive, neophobia, agoraphobia and other aspects of anxiety or fear in mice. The output of the various interacting drives and influences is ambulation, which is the only directly measurable parameter. Depending on various physiological and morphological factors typically measured in the home cage, if the animal has the same level of basic locomotor activity, ambulation is mainly enhanced by exploratory drive and mainly depressed by anxiety and fear. Figure 1 shows hyperactivity in Disc1-L100P mutant mice measured as number of horizontal beam breaks in the open field. (Clapcote SJ, Lipina TV et al 2007. Behavioural phenotypes of Disc1 missense mutations in mice. Neuron 54(3): 387-402)

Figure 1. Ambulation of Disc1 mutant mice in the open field. The homozygous Disc1-L100P mice showed hyperactivity, as compared with wild-type littermates.

Figure 2. Perfomance of Mgat-5-KO mice illustrates the gender effect on ambulation and exploratory activity. (Soleimani L, Roder JC, Dennis JW, Lipina T. Beta N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase V (Mgat5) deficiency reduces the depression-like phenotype in mice. Genes Brain Behav. 2008 Apr;7(3):334-43.)

Table 1. Additional parameters could be detected in the open field during first 5 minutes of observation (Perez et al 2007 Absence of the proapoptotic Bax protein extends fertility and alleviates age-related health complications in female mice. PNAS 104(12):5229-5234.)