Validation Study Using Med Associates Automated Video Fear Conditioning System Published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

Med Associates staff, along with the laboratory of Dr. Stephan Anagnostaras at the University of California San Diego, recently had a manuscript titled “Automated assessment of Pavlovian conditioned freezing and shock reactivity in mice using the VideoFreeze system” published in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience (Anagnostaras S.G., Wood S.C., Shuman, T., Cai D.K., LeDuc A.D., Zurn K.R., Zurn J.B., Sage J.R., & Herrera G.M. (2010), Automated assessment of Pavlovian conditioned freezing and shock reactivity in mice using the VideoFreeze system. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 4).

This paper details the methodology that can be employed to ensure that scores coming from an automated system, such as Med Associates Near Infrared Video Fear Conditioning System, are accurately representing the scores that a human observer would obtain. The Med Associates Near Infrared Video Fear Conditioning System results in freezing scores that are virtually indistinguishable from human observation. The linear model comparing automated and human scores was VideoFreeze = 0.97(Human) – 0.007, with a r value of 0.971 and p<0.0001, where “VideoFreeze” is the freezing score determined by our automated computer algorithm and “Human” is the freezing score determined by trained human observation.

A near Perfect Fit!