ACTIVITY MONITOR - Vanderbilt Kennedy Center

MED ASSOCIATES INC. ACTIVITY MONITOR
CHAPTER 2
Getting Started
General Software Information
Data analysis has been taken to an entirely new level with the addition of such measures
as rotational behaviors, zone entries, jumping, etc. (Appendix II) added to the system.
Data acquired on systems using Version 3.0 or higher may be reanalyzed in this version
to obtain these new measures. The analysis parameters may be changed and the data
re-analyzed to extract additional information.
The Activity Monitor is designed for use with MED Associates hardware to collect, plot,
and analyze activity data. All standard data is displayed in real-time, along with a
cumulative plot of the subject's activity. The data acquisition configuration files, which
specify the state of the system (Resolution/Sample Rates, Ambulatory/Stereotypic
Movement definitions), are stored in filename.CFG files. The default settings are userdefined
and determined the very first time that the Activity Monitor software is run. See
Chapter 3, for Configuration File set up.
In addition to providing the database to store all experiment and subject data and
information, we have also provided the option to create an ASCII text and a "hard copy"
printed summary data file automatically. After each subjects’ session or after each
experiment (multiple subjects), the software can print the summary data automatically
and save a summary data file for each subject, simply by checking the appropriate check
boxes in the preference settings window (Figure 3-3). Likewise, analyzed data and Raw
Point data ASCII text files may also be generated aside from the database file. All ASCII
text files are named according to the file-naming scheme presented in Table 3-4 and
discussed in Appendix I.
There are two database files created by the Activity Monitor software: EXP.MDB and
ANALYSIS.MDB. These files are Access ® database files, but may be opened with many
database programs. In order to extract precisely formatted data, they must be
manipulated or sorted with a database program that can open a standard Access ®
scheme. We have opted to create this database to enable researchers to export an
entire experiments worth of analyzed data, sorted and defined, into a spreadsheet to
make Subject, Group, and Experiment data analysis simple and fast.
Introduction to Open-Field Activity Monitoring
Open-Field Activity (OFA) monitoring is a sensitive method of measuring both gross and
fine locomotor activity in small animals. In general, computerized OFA characterizes
multiple end points of motor behavior, and has proven to be a powerful assessment tool
with many applications in behavioral pharmacology, toxicology, and genetics. For
example, dopamine agonist studies can use distance traveled in centimeters as a
measure of gross motor activity that is amenable to quantitative analysis. Opiate
tolerance studies can examine overall distance traveled, but can also utilize time and
distance in the margin of the chamber as well. Anxiety can also be characterized with an
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