Problems Associated with Experimental Condition in the Open Field Test

Abstract

The purpose of behavioral teratology screening is to pick up agents in animal studies, which may cause behavioral dysfunction of human offspring whose mothers were insulted during the prenatal period. Recently, a behavioral test battery has been employed for estimating effects of environmental compounds or drugs on functional and neurobehavioral developments of offspring born from insulted mothers. Open field behaviors have been used frequently for investigating the effects on emotionality or activity of rodents in a novel situation. Although an open field test is the most traditional and the most popular method of measuring emotionality or activity of rodents, experimental conditions concerning apparatus, noise level, lighting, handling, number of trials and so on have varied among researchers depending on the different purposes. Before employing this test as one of the behavioral teratology screening tests, sensitivity of this test should be examined with known behavioral teratogens and the adequacy of this test should be determined by examining reproducibility of the results obtained from a positive control. However, if the tests are not carried out under the optimum experimental situations and standardized techniques, the results might be confused with variations. Standardization of experimental condition and accumulation of background data on animals are exceedingly required on this test. For this purpose, we discussed problems associated with experimental condition in the open field test based on our own experiments and review of literature.