Summaries of 2020 research

What animals are you planning to use?

Mice and rats.

For what purpose are the animals going to be used?

Men and women differ in their behaviour and vulnerability to psychiatric illness. There is currently little known about how these differences arise; this project aims to identify/characterise the underlying biological processes in mammals. Male and female mice/rats (some of which will be genetically altered) will undergo behavioural testing, and their brain structure/function will also be examined; how neurobiological measures are influenced by neurochemical/hormonal/immune system manipulations will be investigated.

What will be the harms to those animals and how will these be limited?

Most procedures will be mild and will cause no more than transient stress/pain. To motivate behavioural performance, a degree of food/water restriction will be necessary; animal weights/general health will be monitored regularly.  A minority of behavioural tasks will be aversively motivated (e.g. by mild foot shocks); these tests will only be used where no appetitively-motivated equivalent task is available. Neuroactive substances having mild, transient effects on behaviour will be administered to some animals and will be given by the least-invasive route and in the minimum volume of neutral solution possible. Surgical procedures may result in mild discomfort; these will be performed aseptically with anaesthetics/analgesics to minimise pain.

What alternatives did you consider before embarking on the use of animals in your research?

We need to use animals in our research as the complexities of behaviour (culminating from interactions between multiple physiological systems) cannot be modelled in isolated tissue systems or by using computer simulations.

What will be the expected benefits?

We are particularly interested in understanding the mechanisms by which males are more likely to be diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders (such as autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and by which some women develop psychiatric illnesses following childbirth; identifying/characterising these could reveal novel therapeutic targets for sex-biased brain disorders.

What animals are you planning to use?

Rats and mice.

For what purpose are the animals going to be used?

To identify and characterise the psychological and biological mechanisms underpinning the affective and cognitive processing of rewarding and punishing stimuli; how these processes might be disrupted in rodent models of psychiatric disorders; and how they might be used to provide a means to assess (and address) the welfare implications of common laboratory manipulations.

What will be the harms to those animals and how will these be limited?

The procedures are designed to minimise the adverse impact on animals (and the bulk of the work uses rewarding stimuli) – however there will be mild weight loss from (time-limited) food/water restriction; some pain, nausea, or stress from exposure to aversive stimuli, and possible harm from anaesthesia and surgery.  In all cases, the lowest level of intervention consistent with the experimental aims will be used, and experimental work terminated if the responses of the animals is outside the expected range.

What alternatives did you consider before embarking on the use of animals in your research?

Affect and cognition are properties of a whole, behaving, animal. Computational modelling can (and will) be used to summarise and guide the experimental work) - but cannot replace it.

What will be the expected benefits?

Primarily scientific through the increase in understanding of main topic areas of the project.  In brief, improved understanding of hedonic assessment in rodents and the processing of rewarding and aversive stimuli.  This will contribute to the characterisation of hedonic deficits (or their absence) across a range of animal models of psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders – which is of particular importance as anhedonia and other hedonic deficits are a key unmet therapeutic need.

In addition, applying hedonic assessment methods can identify where laboratory practices have unintended negative welfare impacts on animals, and also assess the success of actions taken to ameliorate such problems.