Gait and Locomotion Blog Posts

How to use CatWalk XT and Incapacitance Tester in non-clinical pain research

Heta Svard from Orion Pharma studies pain and neurological disorders and resports on recent research.

How to let rats run perfectly

Letting animals walk freely in gait research. At Noldus, we strongly believe this is the way to go, so that is how our CatWalk XT system works.

Behavioral effects of optogenetically induced myelination in mice

Myelination, the ‘ensheathment’ of neurons, is essential to the functioning of the central and peripheral nervous systems. So it is not surprising that problems with myelination can lead to a number of crippling diseases.

Gait research: let your animals walk freely

Researchers use different ways to analyze gait in animals. In what instances would a study benefit from a system that is based on voluntary walking?

Parkinson’s & gait impairment: comparing rats and humans

Gait impairment is one of the most prominent symptoms of Parkinson's disease. For good research you need good models and good tests.

How to really challenge mice cerebellar plasticity

Jan-Willem Potters used the ErasmusLadder in his thesis research to study the role of specific mutations of plasticity in the cerebellar microcircuit of mice.

Using CatWalk gait analysis to study monoarthritis in mice

Researchers are always looking for new ways to alleviate symptoms of arthritis. The CatWalk XT has been shown to be very useful in research involving arthritis in rodent models.

Testing without stress: high-throughput phenotyping

The ability to recognize harmful situations and respond accurately is important for the survival of any animal. In order to respond to these situations the animal must be able to learn, remember, and alter its behavior.

Time based relations in gait analysis

I have written two blog posts about static gait parameters. Now it’s time to talk about all four paws, and the time based relationships between them. If you ask me, we’ve been saving the best blog post for last!

Going the distance - and why it matters in gait analysis

A footprint, that is. With CatWalk XT, you can extract a lot of information from just one footprint. In this post, I am taking it a step further by talking about the relationship between prints.

What a print can tell

So what can one footprint tell you? Well, it could tell you a lot. Simply putting the paw in ink and studying the print left behind is one way to go about it, but there are far more sophisticated ways of footprint analysis.

What gait can tell: 3 blogs that will help you understand

The usefulness of gait is well established in research on spinal cord injury, ataxia, and arthritis. But in fact, research on all disorders that influence gait in any way, can benefit from gait and footfall analysis.