Forming a complete picture of the relationship between neural activity and skeletal kinematics requires quantification of skeletal joint biomechanics during free behavior; however, without detailed knowledge of the underlying skeletal motion, inferring limb kinematics using surface-tracking approaches is difficult, especially for animals where the relationship between the surface and underlying skeleton changes during motion. Here we developed a videography-based method enabling detailed three-dimensional kinematic quantification of an anatomically defined skeleton in untethered freely behaving rats and mice. This skeleton-based model was constrained using anatomical principles and joint motion limits and provided skeletal pose estimates for a range of body sizes, even when limbs were occluded. Model-inferred limb positions and joint kinematics during gait and gap-crossing behaviors were verified by direct measurement of either limb placement or limb kinematics using inertial measurement units. Together we show that complex decision-making behaviors can be accurately reconstructed at the level of skeletal kinematics using our anatomically constrained model.


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    Title :

    Estimation of skeletal kinematics in freely moving rodents


    Contributors:
    Monsees, A. (author) / Voit, K. (author) / Wallace, D. (author) / Sawinski, J. (author) / Leks, E. (author) / Scheffler, K. (author) / Macke, J. (author) / Kerr, J. (author)

    Publication date :

    2022-10-17


    Remarks:

    Nature Methods


    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English


    Classification :

    DDC:    629




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