Stress exposure using small mobile robot both in immature and mature period induces mental disorder in rat

The number of patients with mental disorders is increasing in advanced countries, hence more effective psychotropic drugs are recently desired. In process of development of psychotropic drugs, animal experiments have been playing a very important role. Mental disorder model animals which exhibit behavior disorder like patients with mental disorders are used in these experiments. These animals are normally developed by genetic manipulation, surgical operation in their brain or drug administration. A candidate for a new drug is administrated in these animals to evaluate its effect. However, we have some doubts about conventional mental disorder model animals because they are induced these disorders by using methods which are quite different from causes of mental disorder of human beings. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop an novel methodology to create mental disorder model animals. We then developed a small mobile robot and a control system for it. Using them, we have performed some experiments to create a mental disorder model rat. We had then succeeded in developing a mental disorder model rat by exposing stress using the robot during immature period. This rat exhibits low activity in some behavior tests during mature period. For better understanding of how stress exposure induces mental disorder in a rat, we conducted another experiment based on stress vulnerability hypothesis. In this experiment, stress was exposed during both immature and mature period while that had been exposed only during immature period. We prepared several conditions of stress exposure by changing robot behavior pattern to find the one to induce much stress in a rat. From a result of experiment, we found that a rat which received gentle chase by the robot during immature period was induced much stress when it received robot attack during mature period. Thus, we consider that this rat is more appropriate to the mental disorder model than that was developed in our past experi- ent.