Dear colleagues,

we would like to give you an overview of our first network meeting, held within the framework of a “Special Interest Group (SIG)” at “Measuring Behavior 2000”, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. 

Main topic of the meeting was the presentation and discussion of the MMB-database. 

The participants defined the aims of the database:            

• Standardize appearance of data.

• Provide detailed description of all parameters that might affect mouse behavior. 

• Ease data access. 

• Enable cross-referencing to the information provided by the MMB database.

• Support comparison of test results and reproduction of test settings.

• Provide guidelines for performing behavioral tests.

• Develop a standard for the behavioral phenotyping of mice in interaction with participants of the MMB network.

The factors that might influence the animal´s performance are: housing & caging conditions, nutrition, animal specifications, apparatus specifications, breeding and testing conditions. These factors are broken down to sub-factors. In this example one of the sub-factors of the factor “housing- and caging” is “climatic conditions”. This sub-factor is broken down to parameters. In this example to the parameters “room-temperature” and “humidity”. 

"housing & caging conditions"

The sub-factors and parameters of the factor "housing & caging conditions" were finally settled. 

A listing is presented within:

Factor housing & caging: sub-factors and parameters

"forms"

Furthermore we presented the first ideas of data-input-, data-search- and data-output-forms. 

For that purpose we developed exemplary sheets that we would like to present here: 

home