Wireless Inertial Sensors for Monitoring Animal Behavior

Wireless sensors were designed which are small and light enough to be worn by small animals such as rats. These sensors are used to record three axes acceleration data from animals during natural behavior in a cage. The behavior of the animal is further extracted from the recorded acceleration data using neural network based pattern recognition algorithms. Successful recognition of eating, grooming and standing are demonstrated using this approach. Finally another potential application of this research is demonstrated in behavioral neuroscience by showing correlations between action potentials recorded from the motor cortex of a rat and acceleration data.