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Webinar
Do we actually understand what we mean by “anxiety” in rodent models of anxiety?
Summary
In this talk, Dr. Mu Yang will go over the major differences between contemporary, highly automated methods and “old school”, ethologically based methods of measuring behaviors. She will use anxiety- and fear- related behaviors as an example, to explain evolutionary and ethological factors in designing assays (e.g. the Rat Exposure Test of anxiety). She will also expound on caveats of several mouse models of autism, on their uses and limitations. She will end the talk calling for the community to take advantages of the progress of the AI technology and bringing back ethologically based behavioral measures.
Dr. Mu Yang
Is the director of the Mouse Neurobehvaior Core at Columbia University. She was a former graduate student of Robert and Caroline Blanchard; well known for their work on introducing ethologically based behavioral assays to the field of preclinical neuropsychiatric research. She did her postdoc with Dr. Jacqueline Crawley at NIH where she published extensively on mouse models of neurodevelopmental disorder. Dr. Yang has pioneered a number of behavioral assays that are based on species-specific behaviors. She is also a strong advocate on scientific integrity and data transparency.
Dr. Steffen van Heijningen
Steffen van Heijningen received his PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands. He has worked in animal behavioral labs since he was an undergraduate student, and serves as a marketing communication specialist for Noldus since 2021. He is responsible for the larger part of the animal neuroscience domain at Noldus, creating insightful, informative and accurate content. The current webinar will be hosted by Steffen.