Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Quantitative Behavior Tracking Of Xenopus Laevis Tadpoles For Neurobiology Research, Alexander Hansen Hamme

Senior Projects Fall 2018

Xenopus laevis tadpoles are a useful animal model for neurobiology research because they provide a means to study the development of the brain in a species that is both physiologically well-understood and logistically easy to maintain in the laboratory. For behavioral studies, however, their individual and social swimming patterns represent a largely untapped trove of data, due to the lack of a computational tool that can accurately track multiple tadpoles at once in video feeds. This paper presents a system that was developed to accomplish this task, which can reliably track up to six tadpoles in a controlled environment, thereby …