Rodent ultrasonic mating calls as a biomarker for oromotor deficits in Parkinsonian animal model
Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: Neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD), likely initiate \ntheir pathologies primarily within the brain and later manifest themselves in daily \nbehavioral functions. In patients with PD, the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the \nbasal ganglia results in sensorimotor deficits, including tremor, bradykinesia, \nolfactory function loss, speech/voice loss, and eating disorders. \nAlthough not much is known about the etiology of Parkinson’s disease, \nextensive studies have focused on correlating different signs of motor degradation \nwith the degree of dopaminergic neuron loss. Despite the fact that different animal \nmodels and diverse behavioral methods have been developed to further characterize \nlimb motor function loss, the loss of fine oromotor function, which includes eating/biting disorders and voice/speech loss, has been largely overlooked due to its \nintrinsic complexity as well as the lack of a precise method for quantitative \ndescription. An animal model was developed for the study of oromotor deficits in PD \nthat utilizes the production of ultrasonic vocalization in lab rodents. Parkinsonian \nanimals suffer the same symptoms in their vocalization compared to human PD \npatients: a significant drop of intensity and pitch variation. Furthermore, a newly \ndeveloped biting test provided evidence that the animal’s oromotor function have \nbeen compromised due to dopamine loss. Overall, these studies show that \nqualitative analysis of the ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) of laboratory rats can \nserve as a sensitive behavioral biomarker for the detection of subtle oromotor deficits \nin neurodegenerative diseases.
Author: Teh-Sheng Ma
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Neurology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1736128949