SwiftRESEARCH · Research services
Home-cage activity and sleep-like rest
Activity across the 24-hour light-dark cycle and sleep-like rest, from continuous video of the home cage, with no implants. Bring recordings you already have, or capture them with us on a supported setup.
- Species
- Mice and rats
- View
- A side or overhead view of each home cage, with infrared light for the dark phase
What we measure
The endpoints, defined with you before scoring
24-hour activity
Activity hour by hour across the days of the study, as profiles and actograms.
Light and dark phases
Activity in each phase, the ratio between them, and when activity starts around lights-off.
Sleep-like rest
Rest bouts by your study's definition, for example 40 seconds or more without movement: total rest, bout count and bout length.
Around events
Activity before and after the events you log, such as cage changes or treatments, by time of day.
Two ways to start
Footage you have, or a capture we plan with you
Analyze footage you already have
Send authorized recordings and your study design. We score a sample first and tell you what can be measured, then the full set.
Capture with us
We plan the recording with you on a supported camera setup, your team runs the test under your approved protocol, and we take it from the footage to reviewed results.
How it is scored: Measured from video against the definitions agreed with you, and reviewed by a person before results reach you.
What you receive
Results you can check, and what we need from you
You receive
- Hourly activity per cage, or per animal for animals housed alone, across the recording, with actograms.
- Light- and dark-phase summaries, and sleep-like rest per day.
- The definitions used, the rest threshold included, so the analysis can be repeated.
- Example clips from your footage behind the numbers, so you can check them.
We need
- Continuous video of each home cage for the days of the study, with infrared light in the dark phase.
- The light schedule, and the times of cage changes, treatments and other events.
- Cage and animal IDs and groups, coded if you want the analysis blind to group.
- For capture with us: the racks and cages to record, and where the footage is to be kept.
The test
Where it comes from
Pack and colleagues (2007) treated continuous inactivity of 40 seconds or more as sleep in mice and compared it with EEG and EMG recordings; Fisher and colleagues (2012) used video tracking in the home cage, also against EEG and EMG. Both offer a way to look at sleep-like rest without implants.
- Pack AI, Galante RJ, Maislin G, et al. (2007). Novel method for high-throughput phenotyping of sleep in mice. Physiological Genomics 28:232–238. doi:10.1152/physiolgenomics.00139.2006
- Fisher SP, Godinho SIH, Pothecary CA, Hankins MW, Foster RG, Peirson SN (2012). Rapid assessment of sleep-wake behavior in mice. Journal of Biological Rhythms 27:48–58. doi:10.1177/0748730411431550
Questions
Is this sleep?
We report sleep-like rest: immobility by your study's definition, for example 40 seconds or more without movement, a published video proxy compared with EEG in its original studies. It is not EEG sleep staging and does not separate REM from non-REM sleep.
Per cage or per animal?
Per cage, or per animal for animals housed alone. Ask us about group-housed animals: we check what can be measured on a sample first.
How long can a recording run?
As long as your study needs, days or weeks. For capture with us, we plan the cameras and where the footage is kept with you.
Do you run the animals?
Your team, or the facility you work with, runs the study under your approved protocol. We help plan the recording, then score and analyze it.
How is it priced?
Each project gets a written scope and quote: inputs, deliverables, how results are reviewed and the price. Academic labs get a discount, shown in the quote.
More assays
Other assays we score
Novel object recognition (NOR)
Exploration of each object and the discrimination index, phase by phase.
Behavioral satiety sequence (BSS)
Eating, grooming, activity and resting after a meal, bin by bin.
Kaolin pica (rats)
Kaolin and food intake per animal and period, as a nausea-like measure.
Social interaction and three-chamber tests
Three-chamber sociability and social novelty, and free interaction.
Open field test
Distance moved, time in the center, thigmotaxis and rearing.
We also scope the elevated plus maze, Y-maze, fear conditioning (freezing), nest building and marble burying, and other tests: describe yours.
Tell us about your study
The endpoint, your species, and whether you already have footage or need help capturing it.