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COST-TEATIME Newsletter, July 2023

Dear colleagues,

Welcome to the TEATIME COST Action newsletter for improving biomedical research by automated behaviour monitoring in the animal home-cage. In this edition we are pleased to announce the launch of the new Home Cage Monitoring Forum. We apologise and have corrected the link to Silvia Mandillo’s Grant Report from the previous edition; please use the link in this edition to read her report on the 8th Mediterranean Neuroscience Society (MNS).

Our Behaviour Forum has been launched

We are pleased to inform you all that our Forum is now available for you to join the discussion, share ideas, and get support. Please use the QR code to find the Forum.

The Behaviour Forum

TEATIME Grant Reports

TEATIME has awarded eight grants to individuals this year to undertake Short-term Scientific Missions (STSM) to visit labs in countries other than their own. Recent reports are included her e.

ITC Grant Report

Mailis Carrilho presenting her research at the 17^th Rodens et Spatim – International Conference on Rodent Biology in Spain.

STSM Grant Reports

Alice Melloni visited Prof Stuart Peirson’s laboratory in Oxford and discussed the setups dedicated to behavioural testing.

Lionie Pakulat visited Nuno Franco’s laboratory at the University of Porto and discussed the automated cages for mice.

TEATIME Dissemination Grant Reports

Aleksandra Bartelik with a TEATIME presentation at Central-East European Laboratory Animal Science Congress, Prague.

Silvia Mandillo was awarded our first TEATIME Dissemination grant which enabled her to attend the 8th Mediterranean Neuroscience Society (MNS) Conference Dubrovnik, Croatia. We are delighted to share her report in this newsletter.

COST TEATIME Newsletter – May 2023

Closing Date for Grants Extended to 30th of June
If you need help with your application, please let us know

Apply for Grant

TEATIME Frontiers Special Edition

A few of our TEATIME members are editors of a new special edition called: Home Cage-based Phenotyping in Rodents: Innovation, Standardization, Reproducibility and Translational Improvement – Volume II

Link to topic

2022 Dissemination Grant Report
Silvia Mandillo was awarded our first TEATIME Dissemination grant which enabled her to attend the 8th Mediterranean Neuroscience Society (MNS) Conference Dubrovnik, Croatia. We are delighted to share her report in this newsletter.

Read Report

TEATIME Webinars

AMBER: automated maternal behavior during early life in rodents. Dr. Hannah Lapp(University of Texas at Austin)

Introducing a novel, syndrome-based approach for depression modelling in translational neuropsychiatry: opportunities and challenges. Dr. Iven-Alex von Mücke-Heim (Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany)

Revolutionizing translational psychiatry through rodent neuroethology. Dr. Yair Shemesh (Department of Brain Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel).

Radial maze without food deprivation: a new, automated, stress-free and voluntary test for assessment of spatial memory in mice. Dr. Jie Mei (International Research Center for Neurointelligence (IRCN), University of Tokyo, Japan) rael).

Watch our webinars

TEATIME News

TEATIME Catalogue
We have compiled a list of devices and software that falls under our definition of HCM. The list can be filtered and searched. Our aim is to create a useful and accurate resource. If you have more content to add, please email us.

Catalogue

TEATIME Publications

We will continue to highlight events and papers in this newsletter. However, we are pleased to announce we now have a webpage dedicated to TEATIME publications and conferences, as well as many other resources.

Link to Resources

Training School

We had over 50 applications for our training School, but we can only accept 24 and we are looking forward to meeting them in Porto later this year.

Constitutive depletion of brain serotonin differentially affects rats’ social and cognitive abilities

was co-authored by TEATIME colleagues published online in iScience

Systematic Review of Home Cage Monitoring in Rodents

Members of the TEATIME consortium have worked together with other researchers to complete and publish a Systematic Review to shed light on the development of home cage monitoring (HCM) and the current state of the art. The review was carried out on 521 publications retrieved through PubMed and Web of Science.

Click here to read the full Systematic Review

What are the benefits of joining the TEATIME Network?

Join the TEATIME Network

On behalf of all members of the TEATIME Action,

Vootele Voikar – TEATIME Chair
Sara Wells – Grant Holder, TEATIME Vice-chair
Sabine Hölter-Koch – Science Communication Coordinator

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COST-TEATIME Newsletter, January 2023

Our Mission

To improve animal research and animal welfare for the sake of translational medicine. New monitoring technologies for laboratory animals will benefit biomedical research and ultimately patients.

Do you want to visit a laboratory in another country to work with home-cage monitoring for a week or more?
TEATIME offers grants of up to €4,000 for Short Term Scientific Missions (STSMs)

Apply for a grant

TEATIME Presentations in 2022

In 2022 COST Action members gave presentations at various International meetings including the Swiss Lab Animal Science Association meeting in Lausanne. These meetings are always a good opportunity for networking and promoting TEATIME.

See a list of meetings attended in 2022

Open Call for ITC Conference Grants
TEATIME is offering 4 ITC (Inclusiveness Target Country) Conference Grants (of up to €2,000 each) for young researchers and innovators to attend a high-level conference and present their work as a poster or oral presentation.

Apply for a grant

TEATIME Webinars

We have hosted two recent webinars; Dr. A. Kravitz “Open source approaches for studying home cage behaviour” & Dr. C. Ferland-Beckham “Modelling neuropsychiatric disorders in the laboratory: Why sex matters?”

These and more are available on demand via our YouTube channel.

We currently have three webinars coming up:

24.1.23 – 3 pm CET – WG2 webinar: Balint Kiraly, Balazs Hangya (Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungary): Efficient, stress-free learning of mice in a fully automated training system.
https://cost-eu.zoom.us/j/85971753727

28.2.23 – 3 pm CET – TEATIME webinar: Hannah Lapp (Univ Austin Texas, USA): AMBER: automated maternal behavior during early life in rodents (Summary: Using open-source deep learning tools and computational behavioral analysis to measure maternal behavior in the home cage.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBS2_9it__I

23.3.23 – 3 pm CET – TEATIME webinar: Iven Mücke-Heim (MPI Psychiatry, Germany): presentation of their recent review “Introducing a depression-like syndrome for translational neuropsychiatry: a plea for taxonomical validity and improved comparability between humans and mice”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01762-w

Watch our webinars

Key events in 2022

FENS Networking event
We held a special workshop to share with international behaviourists and other researchers, and inform about our future workshops and training events, that will take place in the next 3 years.

Training workshop
In September 2022 we held our first education, advice, networking and training workshop in HCM for academic researchers. The workshop was well attended. The TEATIME Advanced Training School will be 10-14 July 2023 in Oporto, Portugal.

Report on our Working Group meeting in Prague
October 2022 saw our first all action groups meeting in Prague. It was a good occasion for us to talk face to face and give updates on how the workstreams are progressing.

Report on Working Groups’ activities
There are five Working groups aligned to TEATIME, each group meets regularly throughout the year and focuses on its workstream. A brief overview for each Action stream can be found via the link below.

Read our reports

Development of an IntelliCage-based cognitive bias test for mice was authored by TEATIME colleagues and was the first Open Research publication

Plans for 2023

In 2023, you can find us at Scand-LAS 2023, European Brain and Behaviour Society and many more. Watch this space!

Find all upcoming events

We will be offering more training and education opportunities across 2023 both online and in person.

Find all upcoming training

Home Cage Monitoring System: a Working Definition

The Olog depicted above is a representation of the definition of Home Cage Monitoring. “A system that collects information on an animal which lives inside an enclosure that provides food, water, social contacts, and environmental enrichment”.

View a downloadable enhanced version of the olog

Vootele Voikar – TEATIME Chair
Sara Wells – Grant Holder, TEATIME Vice-chair
Sabine Hölter-Koch – Science Communication Coordinator