Food & Drink / Metabolism PheComp System for Compulsive Food and Drink Intake and Activity Food & Drink / Metabolism • PheComp System The innovative PheComp system ideally measures food/ liquid consumption and correlated motor activity in rodents to assess compulsive behavior. The PheComp system uses our weight transducer technology to measure food and drink consumption, thus allowing a continuous signal and precise analysis of the animal’s meal pattern as visualized by the software. Up to four external units for food and/or drink can be connected to each animal home cage, as defined by the user. The system registers absorbed food and waste produced by means of highly stable weight transducers mounted to the platform supporting each cage. The volume of water consumed as well as any possible bottle leakage is also accounted for with the same transducer technology. Animal activity and rearing is recorded simultaneous to the food and drink monitoring using two-dimensional IR frames mounted on either side of the home cage. The signals from the transducers and IR frames are amplified, digitized and collected by our PheComp software for analysis. A track is also recorded and can be analyzed using our ActiTrack software (see page 26) for animal locomotor activity analysis. The PheComp system is completely scalable – connect up to 12 cages to one computer by simply daisy-chaining each cage to the next in sequence. Our PheComp system, with its modular design, is perfect for a wide range of experimental procedures characterizing the evolution of the animal compulsive behavior including: • General testing of obese vs. non-obese subjects • Compulsive behaviors through choice test, bitter test, starvation, etc) • Screening of anti-obesity compounds key features } Multiple combinations of food/drink dispensers } Uninterrupted recording } Very highly stable weight transducers } Registers account for food and drink wastage } External dispensers avoid any influence on living space and minimizes artifacts parameters measured With Compulse } Food or drink consumption by user-defined time interval } Meal pattern analysis With ActiTrack (see page 26) } Spontaneous activity by user-defined time interval } Ambulatory behavior by user-defined time interval } Stereotyped behavior by user-defined time interval } Rearing behavior } Movement pattern: resting/slow/fast movement classification } Permanence time and entries into user-defined zones components included } Home cage } Floor grid } Top lid with filter } Platform (bridge amplifiers, A/D converter, data display) options } IR frames for activity and rearing recording } Wire bar lid 90 www.coulbourn.com • www.panlab.com