Slow angled-descent forepaw grasping (SLAG): an innate behavioral task for identification of individual experimental mice possessing functional vision

Macarena Gil-Pagés, Robert J Stiles, Christopher A Parks, Steven C Neier, Maja Radulovic, Alfredo Oliveros, Alejandro Ferrer, Brendan K Reed, Katelynn M Wilton, Adam G Schrum

There is significant interest in the generation of improved assays to clearly identify experimental mice possessing functional vision, a property that could qualify mice for inclusion in behavioral and neuroscience studies. Widely employed current methods rely on mouse responses to visual cues in assays of reflexes, depth perception, or cognitive memory. However, commonly assessed mouse reflexes can sometimes be ambiguous in their expression, while depth perception assays are sometimes confounded by variation in anxiety responses and exploratory conduct. Furthermore, in situations where experimental groups vary in their cognitive memory capacity, memory assays may not be ideal for assessing differences in vision.