Shivam’s Dancing Mice (sort of)

Technically spelled DANNCE for 3-Dimensional Aligned Neural Network for Computational Ethology, I found Shivam’s presentation on his work this summer very interesting. This DANNCE contraption is essentially a special box that his lab has been developing to better track mice’s movements during behavior tests. It is a more accurate way to quantify their behavior rather than relying solely on human judgement since it uses machine learning to make visual diagrams of the mice while running the tests. Even though Shivam mentioned that it had been developed to observe mouse behaviors associated with Parkinson’s disease—which is what his lab is studying—when testing them after receiving a dose of a certain drug, I thought it was relevant to my own research at the Ji lab since we do a lot of our own types of behavior tests on mice. Maybe this box could also be a valuable addition in our lab later down the line and I know it would definitely be of great use for many other labs doing similar work.