Behavioural despair assessments are standardised paradigms in which brief, inescapable stress is used to elicit immobility, which is quantified as an index of passive coping. The forced swim test places a rodent in a cylinder of water from which it cannot escape and scores active swimming and climbing against passive immobility during a five-minute test that follows a longer pre-test exposure[1]. The tail suspension test suspends a mouse by the tail and records the duration of the immobile posture[2]. Reduced immobility is read as an antidepressant-like effect, provided that general locomotor activity is unchanged[1]. Construct and face validity for depressive-like states are weak, and immobility is held to reflect stress-coping strategy rather than depression[3].
- behavioural despair
- forced swim test
- tail suspension test
- immobility
- stress coping
References
- David A Slattery; John F Cryan; Using the rat forced swim test to assess antidepressant-like activity in rodents. Nat. Protoc. 2012, 7, 1009-1014, 10.1038/nprot.2012.044.
- John F. Cryan; Cedric Mombereau; Annick Vassout; The tail suspension test as a model for assessing antidepressant activity: Review of pharmacological and genetic studies in mice. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 2005, 29, 571-625, 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2005.03.009.
- Kathryn G. Commons; Aram B. Cholanians; Jessica A. Babb; Daniel G. Ehlinger; The Rodent Forced Swim Test Measures Stress-Coping Strategy, Not Depression-like Behavior. ACS Chem. Neurosci. 2017, 8, 955-960, 10.1021/acschemneuro.7b00042.