Marble Burying Problems

A primary advantage of the marble burying and nestlet shredding tests is the fact that each depends on natural and spontaneous behaviors of mice that can be quantified after test completion allowing a single investigator to set up an experiment and then remain outside of the testing room until sessions end.

Marble burying problems.

Marble burying is an animal model used in scientific research to depict anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorder ocd behavior. While widely used there is significant controversy over the interpretation of its results. However some investigators incorporate the sub acute treatment regimen as an essential component for screening anti compulsive agents. The 1 3 ns finding that marble burying was constant across several exposures at different times of day suggests that burying behavior has no clear diurnal pattern.

The marble burying behavior test is an acute test. 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. However modulation of marble burying by serotonin reuptake inhibitors prompted its link to obsessive compulsive disorder compulsive like behavior. 1 3 since the bulk of this work was done using female mice the 1 1 ns finding that males have the same propensity to bury marbles shows 1 5 ns that the behavior is not peculiar to.