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Light Level Intensity Alters Anxiety, But Not Memory, During Open-Field And Novel Object Location Tasks In Male Rats, Angelina Tassone

Biological Sciences

Appropriate design and control of testing conditions during assessment of animal behavior is critical to maximize generalizability, replicability, and translational relevance. Some sensory stimuli are often controlled: for instance, during rodent behavioral testing, efforts are commonly made to reduce or eliminate olfactory and auditory distractions. However, less attention is paid to the ambient light level intensity (lux), which may vary even between rooms in the same facility. We sought to explore whether behavior is influenced by the standard illumination intensity in one of our behavioral testing rooms. To this end, we measured anxiety-like behaviors, exploration, and spatial memory performance in …