Large Animal Testing for Medical Devices

Unlocking Insights into Neurobehavioral Function: From Anxiety to Cognition

At HT Biosciences, our Behavioral Neuroscience Platform offers comprehensive, standardized testing to evaluate rodent behavior across motor, cognitive, emotional, and social domains. Utilizing validated paradigms and automated tracking systems, we deliver precise, reproducible data for preclinical studies in CNS drug development, neuropsychiatric research, and neurodegenerative disease modeling.

Core Behavioral Assays

1. Motor & Exploratory Behavior

• Open Field Test: Quantify locomotor activity, thigmotaxis, and exploratory drive.
• Rotarod Test: Assess motor coordination, balance, and fatigue resistance.
• Treadmill Analysis: Evaluate endurance and gait dynamics under controlled conditions.

2. Anxiety & Depression Profiling

• Elevated Plus Maze (EPM): Measure anxiety-like behavior via open/closed arm exploration.
• Light/Dark Box Test: Contrast time spent in aversive vs. safe zones.
• Tail Suspension Test (TST) & Forced Swim Test (FST): Screen antidepressant efficacy through despair-related immobility.

3. Learning & Memory Assessment

• Morris Water Maze (MWM): Spatial navigation and long-term memory evaluation.
• Radial Arm Maze: Working/spatial memory testing with food reward paradigms.
• Novel Object Recognition (NOR): Short- and long-term recognition memory analysis.

4. Social & Emotional Behavior

• Three-Chamber Social Interaction Test: Quantify sociability, social novelty preference, and autism-related phenotypes.
• Resident-Intruder Test: Aggression and dominance hierarchy assessment.
• Ultrasonic Vocalization (USV) Recording: Measure emotional states in pups or adult rodents.

5. Nociception & Sensory Processing

• Plantar Test (Hargreaves Method): Thermal pain sensitivity via paw withdrawal latency.
• Von Frey Filaments: Mechanical allodynia assessment.
• Hot/Cold Plate Test: Nociceptive response profiling.

Key Applications