| dc.description.abstract | SUMMARY
The majority of laboratory animals is a prey in the nature, therefore they can be
used in the fields of many psychological researches, such as modelling different
human anxiety syndromes. Previously the rat used to be the primary model, but
parallel to the development of molecular biology, sensitive transgenic mouse mod els appeared. To be able to effectively use these animals, the authors overview
the natural behaviour of mice and their reaction in answering various situations.
There are great differences amongst the phenotypes of the individual strains and
lines, including behaviour and temperament, for example the CD1 mice are calm,
the BALB/c ones rather irritable (Figure 1–3). In addition, during the experimenta tion a kind of environment should be assured mice to gratify their natural action
catalogue, prevent influencing the results of the tests. The environmental enrich ment influences animals’ ethology, physiology and brain functions. The acoustic
enrichment of the environment, namely the use of musical sound stimuli, became
more and more preferred. A continuous background music may appease animals
and decrease the stress of the constant, inevitable and abrupt noises. Moreover, it
might have an effect on human, working with the animals and by this way may also
influence the latter. The assumption is logical that the use of music might help to
improve animal welfare and assure the standardisation and repeatability of experi ments, as well as the reliability of the results. To achieve this, sufficient information
is required about the musical preference of the most important experimental ani mal, the mouse and its strains: which type of music, in which hearing ranges and
frequencies, applied in which circumstances are efficient or even harmful. | en_US |
