Marble Burying Mice

The marble burying assay is able to detect phenotypes related to anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorders.

Marble burying mice.

Mice with ocd like symptoms tend to engage in a high degree of repetitive behaviors including digging. The authors ruled out the learning component in the protocol along with sex dependence and compared the behavior of mice to frustrated non reward and compulsive behavior. The marble burying test is a useful model of both obsessive compulsive like ocd behavior and or anxiety like behavior. When put in a cage with marbles mice with ocd like symptoms tend to engage in a high degree of repetitive behaviors including digging while mice with a high degree of anxiety tend to engage in a high degree of digging in.

Marbles serve as means to measure the amount of digging. It has also been proposed that the test may have predictive validity for the screening of novel antidepressants 12 15 anxiolytics 15 16 and antipsychotics 17 19. While widely used there is significant controversy over the interpretation of its results. The marble burying task can be used both as an indicator of obsessive compulsive like ocd behavior and or anxiety like behavior.

Marble burying the marble burying test is a useful model of neophobia 1 anxiety 1 7 and obsessive compulsive behavior 8 11. Instead marble burying by mice is an incidental phenomenon. Mice are individually housed in a cage filled with 5 cm of novel bedding for a 30 minute testing period. Marble burying is an animal model used in scientific research to depict anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorder ocd behavior.

In response to novel bedding environment mice exhibit digging behavior.