Recoding, Analysis and Playback of Ultrasonic Vocalizations (calls)

[Ronald Bulthuis]

Dear All,

This thread is intended to introduce you to the possibilities of using Ultrasound Vocalizations (USV) as an useful parameter in preclinical tests (especially in tests involving social interaction, pain, stress, anxiety or sexual related disorders).

Rats and mice and most other rodents express themselves using sounds that are beyond our hearing range, also referred to as Ultrasound (15 kHz and up).

There is evidence that USV is used as a sensitive indicator of subtle emotional and motivational changes in a number of animals. Therefore, USV produced by animals in various conditions could be explored as a non-invasive method for registering the welfare status of an animal.

A good system that can record and automatically detect and quantify Ultrasonic calls is SonoTrack. A few advantages of Sonotrack compared to other products in the market are:
- Full spectrum recording using high quality Ultrasound Microphones (most other systems are based on old technology, applying so-called bat-detectors that require tuning to a small frequency band)
- Measurement of 4 independent channels (microphones) at the same time
- Extremely low noise amplifiers (enabling recording of very weak ultrasonic vocalizations)
- Automatic ultrasound call counter (enables quick processing of your data to the end points of your experiment)
- Optional possibility to Playback Ultasound to the animal (can be used as a stimulus).

More information and video's can be found on the website of Metris b.v. Metris B.V. - Animal Behavior Analysis Solutions

Kind regards,
Ronald Bulthuis

Ronald