#behavioral testing

12 Things Every Manager Should Know about DISC (Part 1)

DISC is one of the most commonly used and popular employee assessments on the planet.  But as is the case with so many things, success attracts evangelists, dedicated advocates, and passionate naysayers.  This article attempts to set the record straight about what DISC is and isn’t.

DISC describes 4 styles of human behavior.It’s a very practical but simple model. But despite all the hoopla, DISC…

So while Huntington's Disease is a devastating one, it would be highly unethical to test those with HD or specifically create human individuals with HD to test theoretical treatments on.  Clearly!  Which is why scientists have gone into animal testing.

Now the moral/ethical debates about this are innumerable, with both sides giving good arguments, so I won't go into it... [pause]

So there's been some talk back and forth between Whisker and a few of our other Twitter peoples about potential ways to track the movements of mice.  IR and eyes I believe it was. Usually, when mouse model researchers are examining activity, they choose to use the whole mouse. 

And in fact most of the software available out there, as well as the tests used to examine mouse behavior is based on the contrast between the mouse's body (whether black, brown, white, or multicolored) and the testing arena.  There are, of course, a few reasons for this. 

1) Set up is efficient.  To get a good n for any decent peer reviewed paper, you need many, many mice.  I'm sure I've tested thousands of mice by now in the same battery of tests.  And what's more efficient than sticking a mouse into a box, set on a floor, which is under a camera?

2) Mice are nocturnal creatures.  Sometimes you have to turn the lights off (keeping a red light on) to allow them to explore in their most natural way possible.  In other words, to see how they move and explore normally, you need to be able to make things as normal for them as you can.  Eyes end up being the same color to cameras whether black or pink.

3) To see where a mouse goes, see where it goes!  Mice have a nasty habit of sprawling.  When you want them to go into a particular chamber, they decide to hang out in both chambers.  Many of the tests have learned to account for this, but only by using the length of the mouse's body can they actually do that.  If a sensor is only looking at the head, or only at the tail, it misses what the other side is doing.

4) Mice poo and pee EVERYWHERE.  Even when I've worked with mice on upright touchscreens, they've managed to get their goods on the expensive equipment.

Now what was interesting is the suggestion of Frustrated Total Internal Reflection.  A simple googling of this showed that people have used it in the multi touch sensitive screens.  Now, I don't know how much radiation this would expose a mouse to, but I can imagine how scientists would potentially use it.

An example is, you may have a mouse model of Huntington's and you may want to see whether or not, as they age, their gait will change. 

So you get the mouse model of Huntington's disease and get different aged mice, and run them through, examining any gross changes of motor activity.  Not only would a sophisticated piece of software on such a multitouch platform allow you to see where they are at any given moment, it would let you see specific changes to their walking patterns.  Interesting.

How would you account for their poo?