Mouse Behavioural Phenotyping Facility (MBPF)

Neuroscience Center, Hilife, university of helsinki

About Us

Mouse Behavioral Phenotyping Facility (MBPF) is a state-of-the-art core facility providing space, equipment and professional assistance (including design, implementation, analysis, presentation and interpretation) for researchers interested in the behavioural examination of mouse models. MBPF is a partner in FinnMouse technology platform (supported by model organisms scientific network by Biocenter Finland) and in HiLIFE Comprehensive Model Organisms Platform (CoMO). Facility is operating in the premises of the Laboratory Animal Center (LAC) of University of Helsinki. This combination creates a strong infrastructure to support the research with rodent models.

Services offered

Full service
  • All testing performed and analyzed by MBPF staff. At the end of the study, MBPF will provide all raw data, analyzed results, and necessary documents as a final project report and present the result at a final project meeting if desired.

Training service
  • All testing performed by staff from your group after training by MBPF staff. Analysis of the data can be performed either by your or MBPF staff. At the end of the study, MBPF will provide all raw data and necessary documents.

Minimum service
  • All testing performed and analyzed by staff from your own group after introduction. At the end of the study, MBPF will provide all raw data and necessary documents as a raw project report.

List of available tests
  • Circadian activity – single housed animals (InfraMot), group-housed animals (IntelliCage)
  • Automated home-cage – behavior and cognitive performance in automated, social home cage without experimenter interference (IntelliCage)
  • Emotional behavior – elevated plus-maze, elevated zero-maze, novelty-suppressed feeding, object exploration, open field, light-dark box, forced swim test, tail suspension test, anhedonia (saccharin preference), stress-induced hyperthermia
  • Learning & memory – water maze, Barnes maze, radial maze, T-maze, Y-maze, classical fear conditioning (+extinction), novel object recognition, conditioned taste aversion
  • Motor behavior – accelerating rotarod, grip strength, beam walking, multiple rods, wire hanging, cylinder test, vertical grid
  • Hearing, sensorimotor gating – acoustic startle response, pre-pulse inhibition (PPI) of acoustic startle
  • Nociception – hot plate, plantar test, von Frey test
  • Olfaction – olfactory habituation/dishabituation
  • Vision – visual cliff
  • Social behavior – dyadic social interaction, sociability in 3-compartment test, social preference/avoidance, dominance (tube test), ultrasonic vocalizations
  • Species-specific behavior – nest building, burrowing, grooming, marble burying
  • Stress models – restraint stress, social defeat

Further information

Access to the facility is regulated by terms of service and user fees are applied according to the approved price list. For further information please contact us via email. 

Vootele Võikar, M.D., Ph.D.
Neuroscience Center / Laboratory Animal Center Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE)
P.O. Box 29 (Mustialankatu 1G)
FI-00014 University of Helsinki Finland
Email: vootele.voikar (at) helsinki.fi 
Phone: +358-50-4160466