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Home Cage Running Wheelfor Spontaneous Activity in Mice

The Columbus Instruments Mouse Home Cage Running Wheel measures spontaneous activity in a voluntary free-spinning running wheel. The wheel is constructed to fit universally into the customer’s own familiar “shoebox” style cages. Each station has a magnetic indicator on the wheel and a hall effect sensor outside the cage that detects wheel revolutions. These sensors connect to a computer counter interface and records these wheel revolutions at user specified intervals. Windows software is included for installation on a customer supplied PC. Data can be viewed in real time and exported into a CSV format at the end of the experiment.

The wheel is designed to fit universally into most home cages provided that the wire lid has a flat area measuring 2 inches (5.1 cm) x 4 inches (10.2 cm) and has a ceiling height of 5.5 inches (14.0 cm). The Wheel Counter Interface has inputs for 8 wheel sensors and multiple wheel counters can be daisy chained together to provide a maximum of 128 wheel inputs.

Recording wheel revolutions on an interval basis like this allows further examination into spontaneous running behavior. Other systems only record the cumulative number of wheel revolutions, but over the course of an experiment that lasts for several days these numbers raise more questions than they answer. The counts tell you how much, but not how it happened.

Our interval based recording of wheel revolutions also allows the researchers to identify specific running bouts during post examination of the data. When a mouse runs it will generate counts for several sequential intervals, which can be grouped an analyzed in more detail. With the knowledge of interval duration, number of revolutions, and wheel circumference, calculations for time, distance, and speed in each bout are all possible. The distinction between several short runs vs. one long marathon is easy to asses.

C o l u m b u s I n s t r u m e n t sToll Free [US]: (800) 669-5011 Tel: (614) 276-0861 Fax: (614) 276-0529

Email: sales@colinst.com WebSite: www.colinst.com

Ordering Information:0297-8 8 Station Home Cage Running Wheel System with Software0297-16 16 Station Home Cage Running Wheel System with Software Components:0297-0521 Mouse Running Wheel0297-0501 Hall Effect Sensor with Mount0297-0050 Wheel Counter 8 Channel Interface with Software

Our wheel has been refined over the years by customer feedback and we are confident that we offer the best wheel design that provides the safest, most durable, best performing wheel possible that fits inside the typical laboratory home cage environment.

Open wheel design: The lack of any support structure on one side permits easy entry and exit for mice.

Solid textured running surface: Wheels with rungs can cause injuries to mice. If they mis-step while running then their leg falls through the gap, resulting in a face plant, then a flip. The traumatic experience alone can influence their performance in subsequent running bouts; perhaps they will run slower, more carefully, or exit the wheel prematurely. And in many cases the mis-step can result in a foot injury that prevents running altogether. With our solid surfaced wheel these mis-steps are impossible, so this simultaneously reduces injuries while increasing consistency and performance.

Its an actual wheel-wheel: An alternative to the wheel is the “spinning saucer” design. But mice are able to get it up to speed then stop and ride it like a merry-go-round. The resulting data appears to indicate the mouse ran alot when in fact they did not. With our wheel, when the mouse stops, the wheel stops.

Curious about Energy Expenditure and Wheel Running at the same time? Ask about our Oxymax/CLAMS-HC: Comprehensive Lab Animal Monitoring System for Home

Cages. The running wheel cage can be equipped with analyzers for VO2/VCO2 and RER and many other options.