Closing the loop in neuroethology
EthoLoop system is published in Nature Methods!
Accurate tracking and analysis of animal behavior is a crucial element of modern systems neuroscience. Under naturalistic situations, this can however be very challenging. The EthoLoop framework is designed to follow freely roaming animals in natural, three-dimensional environments such as trees, while providing behavior-triggered stimuli or rewards in a closed-loop manner.
Combining multiple wirelessly controlled reward boxes EthoLoop allows well-controlled and reproducible behavioral experiments where feedback is generated on-the-fly, based on real-time behavioral analysis of high resolution close-up views. Wireless optogenetic manipulations or neurophysiological recordings can easily be integrated with EthoLoop and thus enable the next generation neuroethological experiments.
EthoLoop is fully open source and assembled with off-the-shelf hardware.