The Catalepsy Bar Test is an alternative to the Rotarod and was developed to test motor coordination and motor impairments (Deacon., 2013; Hoffman et al., 1995; Luciani et al., 202). The Catalepsy Bar Test involves placing the forepaws of a rodent subject onto a bar and timing how long it takes for the subject to remove one or both paws from the bar. The automated Maze Engineers Catalepsy Bar test has 4 lanes for the simultaneous study of 4 subjects simultaneously with adjustable bar height to ensure perfect placement for your subjects. Sensors to detect when an animal removes its paws from the bar and included software logs the time at which this occurs

Customizations are available upon request

Other apparatuses used in assessing rodent motor function include the Grip Strength test, the Balance Beam, the Parallel Bars, the Geotaxis Test, the Static Rods Test, the Gait Test,  the Parallel Rod test, and the Pole test

Features

Hardware

• The Catalepsy Bar Test has 4 lanes with a lane width of 10 cm for mice and 15cm for rats
• Metal bar is used with a bar diameter of 0.7 cm
• The distance of the bar above the floor is adjustable between 3-8cm (6cm on average)
• Separators are made of black acrylic of thickness
• Four manual start buttons (not used)
• Wire connector on the back to the control box

Control Box

• Touch screen – capacitive HD LCD screen with high response speed and easy to operate
• Touch screen – dimension 16 x 9 cm
• Front panel – power switch, light indicators
• Back panel – communication cable to the Bar, USB drive to expert data and power cord

Sensor Array

• Each lane has one pair of sensor arrays right above the bar to detect the animal on and off the bar
• The timer to record the start and stop time is per lane

Cable Connection

• Single wire to connect between the control box and the bar
• Connect the cable before power on

Software

• Main Screen: The main screen appears as below after power on
• Data Screen: The data screen shows the datasets of the complete trials.
• Settings Screen: This allows the user to set language preference, screen sound, and brightness

Specification

References

Hoffman DC, Donovan H. Catalepsy as a rodent model for detecting antipsychotic drugs with extrapyramidal side effect liability. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 1995 Jul;120(2):128-33. doi: 10.1007/BF02246184. PMID: 7480543

Deacon, R. M. J. Measuring Motor Coordination in Mice. J. Vis. Exp. (75), e2609, doi:10.3791/2609 (2013)

Luciani KR, Frie JA, Khokhar JY. An Open Source Automated Bar Test for Measuring Catalepsy in Rats. eNeuro. 2020 Jun 19;7(3):ENEURO.0488-19.2020. doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0488-19.2020. PMID: 32198157; PMCID: PMC7307632