Light/dark box

Hidden zones

ANY-maze includes support for one or more hidden zones in your apparatus. When the camera can’t see the animal it is considered to be in a hidden zone. In the case of multiple hidden zones, the specific zone it is in is determined by where it was last seen. In the Light/Dark box there is typically only one hidden zone, so setting it up is very straightforward.

ANY-maze also allows you to specify what proportion of the animal needs to leave a hidden zone for an exit from the zone to occur. This can be very useful to fine-tune exits – for example, you may want to count the animal as leaving the dark side when just 15% of its body (i.e. its head) is visible.

Tracking in the dark side

By using an ANY-maze infrared illuminator (shown here) together with an infrared sensitive camera, such as the ANY-maze USB camera, ANY-maze is able to see through black infrared transparent Perspex. We make the dark side of our Light/Dark box from this material, which means it is possible to track the animal’s activity in both side of the apparatus.

This allows a much richer set of results to be reported – for example, you can compare the distance travelled, the speed, the time immobile, etc. between the light and the dark sides.

Detecting rears

ANY-maze detects rearing using an array of photo-beams positioned such that when the animal rears it breaks beams in the array. We manufacture an array of this type designed specifically for use with ANY-maze – it’s pictured on the right, as part of the ANY-box system, together with our Light/Dark box.

If the dark side of your Light/Dark box is made from infrared transparent black Perspex (as is the case of the box pictured here) then you will be able to detect rears in both sides of the box and compare them.

Tracking simultaneously in multiple apparatus

Tracking simultaneously in, for example, four Light/Dark boxes is a great way to speed up throughput in an experiment.

• Setting up multiple boxes is hardly any more work than setting up one, as most settings are automatically applied across all the apparatus.
• You can have a single camera for each box, or you can have multiple boxes viewed by the same camera, or any combination – for example, two cameras each viewing two Light/Dark boxes.
• Tests in all the apparatus can be run independently, or you can control them together if you prefer.

Viewing the animal's track

ANY-maze can plot the animal’s track or as a heat map.

Track plots, like the one on the right, show where the animal went during the test. In this case the green marker shows where the animal started the test, the red marker where it ended it and the orange markers indicate where the animal was immobile for two seconds or more.

As is clear from this plot, the animal was more active in the dark side (in the left) than in the light.

Results

ANY-maze can provide literally hundreds of results for any test, but some of those that are particularly useful in the Light/dark box include:

• Time in the light side
• Time in the dark side
• Distance travelled in the light side
• Distance travelled in the dark side
• Number of visits to the dark side
• Time immobile in the light side
• Time immobile in the dark side
• Percentage of time in the dark side

Black mouse in a Light/dark box

In this video a black mouse is tracked in a light/dark box in relatively low light, which means that there’s not a lot of contrast between the animal and the background of the apparatus.

White mouse tracked in both sides of a Light/dark box

In this video a white mouse is tracked in both the light and dark sides of a light/dark box. Normally one would do this under infrared light, which makes the animal clearly visible on the dark side, but in this case the test was performed in normal lighting – however, there’s enough infrared in the room lights to make the animal just visible in the dark side, which ANY-maze capitalises on.