Marble Burying Mice

Marble burying the marble burying test is a useful model of neophobia 1 anxiety 1 7 and obsessive compulsive behavior 8 11.

Marble burying mice.

In response to novel bedding environment mice exhibit digging behavior. Mice are individually housed in a cage filled with 5 cm of novel bedding for a 30 minute testing period. The marble burying task can be used both as an indicator of obsessive compulsive like ocd behavior and or anxiety like behavior. It is based on the observation that rats and mice will bury either harmful or harmless objects in their bedding.

Mice with ocd like symptoms tend to engage in a high degree of repetitive behaviors including digging. The marble burying test is a useful model of both obsessive compulsive like ocd behavior and or anxiety like behavior. When put in a cage with marbles mice with ocd like symptoms tend to engage in a high degree of repetitive behaviors including digging while mice with a high degree of anxiety tend to engage in a high degree of digging in. While widely used there is significant controversy over the interpretation of its results.

Instead marble burying by mice is an incidental phenomenon. 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. Marble burying is an animal model used in scientific research to depict anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorder ocd behavior. When mice are placed in a novel cage a common response is to show increased digging behavior.

The authors ruled out the learning component in the protocol along with sex dependence and compared the behavior of mice to frustrated non reward and compulsive behavior.