I have two different groups: my treated group and my control group. Unfortunately, I can not see any difference between my groups in terms of discerning the novel object.
However, I have found that treated animals takes longer to reach the 20 seconds criteria (total exploration for the objects) both days, the familiarisation day and the test day. My control animals do the task faster than the treated ones. So my question is, how the time reaching the 20 seconds criteria could affect the phenotype of the animals?
Many thanks,
Saúl
Reduced object exploration is itself an interesting behavioural phenotype. Generally it reveals reduced motivation or enhanced neophobia.
Probably is due to a locomotor confounding factor.
You should analyse what is the difference in total path between groups. This is easy if you are already video-tracking the position of the subjects. In case there is a difference you could normalize according to the total path.
The 20 secs criteria in Leger et al 2013 is already a way to avoid differences due to the level of activity per groups. Anyway, is important to check what is the extent of it in your dataset.
As Diego pointed out, if you want to know if the reduced object exploration reflects a motivational/anxiety phenotype, you have to exclude first that there are any differences in locomotor activity. If the total path is comparable between your experimental and control animals, then you can consider what you observe a true phenotype of reduced object exploration, which is not secondary to a general reduction in overall motor activity.
How large is your object arena? If it is too large (i.e. the size you may wish to use for rats, etc) it may be too big for the mice, thereby making it appear as though they are spending less time with the objects, when in fact they may be spending a proportional amount when you take into account arena size. Someone else already mentioned the possibility of analyzing overall path/distance traveled I believe - this could also help. What are you giving the mice? If you are treating with a compound that may interfere with a key behavior in this task (i.e. mobility/awakeness/etc) that could be an issue driving your experimental animals to perform more slowly. Though typically in this task, there is no completing the task 'faster', as all animals should be given the same amount of time to explore for each portion of the task. Then, you can analyze the data (typically as a ratio) and compare to chance (50%). If i knew a little more about your specific paradigm I might be able to provide more helpful information.
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