{"doi":"10.3791/68335","title":"Non-aversive Animal Restraint Enabling Recording of Optomotor Reflex in Ground Squirrels","abstract":"The optomotor reflex (OMR) provides a behavioral assessment of an animal's contrast sensitivity and visual acuity. Mice or rats are typically placed directly onto a small circular platform by hand; however, handling animals like this can stimulate stress and anxiety, which introduce confounding factors when interpreting data. It has been shown that non-aversive handling methods, such as picking up mice or rats in a familiar tunnel/tube, can reduce anxiety. This is of particular interest in studies where animals display heightened stress, overactivity, or motor dysfunction, resulting in an inability to stay on the platform. A team led by Drs. Kiyoharu J. Miyagishima and Francisco M. Nadal-Nicolás have redesigned the conventional OMR platform to provide semi-closed containment. This makes it possible for the first time to record the optomotor reflex in the 13-lined ground squirrel, which is one of the few mammals that can see color. It has a visual streak with a high density of cones similar to the human macula providing an attractive model for studying effects on the cone visual system.","journal":"Journal of Visualized Experiments","year":2025,"id":545697,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.954,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":707322,"name":"Francisco M. Nadal‐Nicolás","orcid":"0000-0003-4121-514X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":813676,"name":"J M Ball","orcid":"0000-0002-8849-6308","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1436964,"name":"Thomas A. Münch","orcid":"0000-0002-8884-6961","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1437430,"name":"Boris Benkner","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228902,"name":"Wei Li","orcid":"0000-0001-5696-4309","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":542397,"name":"Kiyoharu J. Miyagishima","orcid":"0000-0002-9744-3152","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":1,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:53:27.751050Z","pmid":"40788863","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}