TY - JOUR AU - Anagnostaras, Stephan AU - Wood, Suzanne AU - Shuman, Tristan AU - Cai, Denise AU - LeDuc, Arthur AU - Zurn, Karl AU - Zurn, J. Brooks AU - Sage, Jennifer AU - Herrera, Gerald PY - 2010 M3 - Original Research TI - Automated Assessment of Pavlovian Conditioned Freezing and Shock Reactivity in Mice Using the Video Freeze System JO - Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience UR - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2010.00158 VL - 4 SN - 1662-5153 N2 - The Pavlovian conditioned freezing paradigm has become a prominent mouse and rat model of learning and memory, as well as of pathological fear. Due to its efficiency, reproducibility and well-defined neurobiology, the paradigm has become widely adopted in large-scale genetic and pharmacological screens. However, one major shortcoming of the use of freezing behavior has been that it has required the use of tedious hand scoring, or a variety of proprietary automated methods that are often poorly validated or difficult to obtain and implement. Here we report an extensive validation of the Video Freeze system in mice, a “turn-key” all-inclusive system for fear conditioning in small animals. Using digital video and near-infrared lighting, the system achieved outstanding performance in scoring both freezing and movement. Given the large-scale adoption of the conditioned freezing paradigm, we encourage similar validation of other automated systems for scoring freezing, or other behaviors. ER -