More running causes more ocular dominance plasticity in mouse primary visual cortex: new gated running wheel setup enables individual tracking of wheel running in group-housed mice

2025 · doi:10.22541/au.176650396.66504762/v1
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A new gated running wheel setup enabled tracking of individual mouse activity, revealing that greater running distance, duration, and speed correlated with enhanced ocular dominance plasticity in the primary visual cortex after monocular deprivation.

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This preprint studied how individual wheel-running activity affects ocular dominance plasticity in mouse primary visual cortex, using monocular deprivation as an established paradigm. Adult, standard-cage–reared group-housed mice were moved to a gated running wheel setup that separately provided a running wheel compartment and enabled tracking of each mouse’s running parameters via implanted RFID chips. Wheel running could restore ocular dominance plasticity, and the magnitude of the ocular dominance shift strongly correlated with individual running behavior, with a principal-component–based composite of overall running activity accounting for 65% of inter-individual variability in the ocular dominance index. The authors note that the work is preliminary and not peer reviewed, and it focuses on behavioral-plasticity correlations within this specific visual system paradigm; it was included in the corpus due to the upstream keyword match but does not explicitly discuss endometriosis or adenomyosis.

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Abstract

Environmental enrichment boosts neuronal plasticity of standard-cage raised (SC) mice. Since it becomes increasingly more important to track individual mouse behaviours and its influence on brain plasticity, we designed a gated running wheel (gRW) setup allowing to correlate individual wheel running with individual measures of neuronal plasticity, using the established paradigm of ocular dominance (OD)-plasticity after monocular deprivation (MD). After SC-rearing until adulthood (>P110), group-housed mice were transferred to gRW cages, providing a separate RW-compartment. Notably, individual running parameters, tracked via implanted RFID-chips, varied enormously: individual mice ran from ~0 to ~20 km across a week of gRW experience, on average running 0-3.96 km in 0-3.85 h/d, and running bouts lasting from <1 to 10 min, while running at a speed of 6-26 cm/s. While wheel running could restore OD-plasticity, individual running parameters strongly correlated with the magnitude of individual OD-plasticity: Mice running longer distances, for longer time, at higher speeds and with longer and more frequent bouts displayed a stronger OD-shift, i.e. showed more experience-dependent V1-plasticity. In turn, a composite measure of overall RW-activity derived from principal component analysis of running parameters accounted for 65% of inter-individual variability of OD-index following MD. Together, our study demonstrates that interindividual variability of running behaviour is high, and mice intrinsically motivated to run more show enhanced V1-plasticity, underscoring the huge importance of analysing individual behavioural parameters together with any measure of brain plasticity.
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Abstract

Environmental enrichment boosts neuronal plasticity of standard-cage raised (SC) mice. Since it becomes increasingly more important to track individual mouse behaviours and its influence on brain plasticity, we designed a gated running wheel (gRW) setup allowing to correlate individual wheel running with individual measures of neuronal plasticity, using the established paradigm of ocular dominance (OD)-plasticity after monocular deprivation (MD). After SC-rearing until adulthood (>P110), group-housed mice were transferred to gRW cages, providing a separate RW-compartment. Notably, individual running parameters, tracked via implanted RFID-chips, varied enormously: individual mice ran from ~0 to ~20 km across a week of gRW experience, on average running 0-3.96 km in 0-3.85 h/d, and running bouts lasting from <1 to 10 min, while running at a speed of 6-26 cm/s. While wheel running could restore OD-plasticity, individual running parameters strongly correlated with the magnitude of individual OD-plasticity: Mice running longer distances, for longer time, at higher speeds and with longer and more frequent bouts displayed a stronger OD-shift, i.e. showed more experience-dependent V1-plasticity. In turn, a composite measure of overall RW-activity derived from principal component analysis of running parameters accounted for 65% of inter-individual variability of OD-index following MD. Together, our study demonstrates that interindividual variability of running behaviour is high, and mice intrinsically motivated to run more show enhanced V1-plasticity, underscoring the huge importance of analysing individual behavioural parameters together with any measure of brain plasticity. Supplementary Material File (schoene et al manuscript.pdf) - Download - 431.66 KB Information & Authors Information Version history Copyright This work is licensed under a Non Exclusive No Reuse License.

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Authors Metrics & Citations Metrics Article Usage 140views 110downloads Citations Download citation Cornelia Schöne, Jaya Sathiyamani, Mihaela Guranda, et al. More running causes more ocular dominance plasticity in mouse primary visual cortex: new gated running wheel setup enables individual tracking of wheel running in group-housed mice. Authorea. 23 December 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22541/au.176650396.66504762/v1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.22541/au.176650396.66504762/v1 If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download. For more information or tips please see 'Downloading to a citation manager' in the Help menu.

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