Biology subjects

Toya, G.

Publications and source records attributed to Toya, G..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

DiverScan: attention-guided exploratory analysis of animal behaviour across diverse comparative experiments

High-throughput tracking yields rich time-series data of animal behaviour, yet extracting biological insight remains a bottleneck, even for simple control--treatment comparisons. Existing analyses struggle to pinpoint the multiple, nonlinearly intertwined differences hidden in the data and fail to generalise across diverse recording set-ups. Here we present DiverScan, a deep-learning framework for attention-guided exploratory analysis of behavioural time series. DiverScan disentangles condition-dependent behavioural differences by pairing a loss function tailored to data exploration with an attention-branch architecture, and highlights condition-specific behavioural features visually and with explanatory text generated by a large language model. DiverScan is validated on a synthetic benchmark and on datasets from seven laboratories spanning multiple species and both single- and multi-animal behaviour. Beyond recovering known phenotypes, we demonstrate that DiverScan helps researchers generate new hypotheses across these diverse datasets. Available as Jupyter notebooks with a graphical user interface and flexible input formats, DiverScan can integrate into existing behavioural-analysis pipelines.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2025

Rats spontaneously show categorical responses toward familiar or unfamiliar conspecifics in a habituation-dishabituation task using multiple habituation stimuli

Discriminating between familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics is a fundamental aspect of social recognition. Previous studies have shown that familiarity strongly influences rat social behavior, and that rats can be trained to discriminate between olfactory cues from cage-mates and non-cage-mates in a digging task. However, such discrimination did not occur in a lever-pressing task using live conspecifics as stimuli. In the present study, we investigated whether rats could discriminate social familiarity in a simple, less-demanding and naturalistic context using whole-animal stimuli. We employed a habituation-dishabituation paradigm in which multiple cage-mate or non-cage-mate individuals were presented during the habituation phase. We examined whether rats would habituate to the familiarity category among these multiple stimuli and subsequently show dishabituation when the stimulus class switched (cage-mate to non-cage-mate or vice versa). During the habituation phase, exploratory responses declined over successive sessions, suggesting habituation to the common element among multiple cage-mates or non-cage-mates, i.e., familiarity/unfamiliarity. When all subjects were considered together, clear dishabituation was not observed, indicating individual variation in habituation. However, a post-hoc analysis restricted to subjects showing sufficient habituation revealed significant dishabituation to the stimulus class switch. These findings suggest that rats can spontaneously classify multiple conspecifics according to their familiarity without training. Rats may flexibly employ different forms of social recognition and information such as individual identity or familiarity-based heuristics to guide adaptive social behavior in varying contexts. HighlightsO_LIWe tested familiarity discrimination in rats by habituation-dishabituation task C_LIO_LIMultiple cage-mate or non-cage-mate stimuli were presented during habituation C_LIO_LIExploratory responses decreased as habituation sessions progressed C_LIO_LIDishabituation occurred in individuals who exhibited sufficient habituation C_LIO_LIRats showed categorical responses toward familiarity or unfamiliarity C_LI

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2024

How does immediate auditory feedback coupled to locomotion influence the spontaneous actions of rats?

Sense of agency is a subjective experience that is difficult to examine in animals and preverbal infants. In animals and infants, the sensory monitoring of self-motion, which is the basis of this sense, and the contingency between self-motion and sensory feedback are investigated. Here, we performed experiments on rats using locomotor movements and auditory feedback of pulsed sounds with real-time changes in pulse interval corresponding to the velocity of locomotion, and tested whether rats change their locomotion depending on the degree of contingency between locomotion and auditory feedback. The results showed that rats increased their locomotion distance when the pulse interval of sound changed in accordance with the velocity of locomotion. However, this effect was not long-lasting. This study provides a simple and convenient method to examine the awareness of the contingency between self-motion and auditory feedback in a wide range of animal species without long-term training, and is expected to be a useful tool for comparisons with humans.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2024

Beyond dichotomy: diversity of rat's ultrasonic vocalizations

Rats emit ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) in diverse contexts, and these USVs are thought to serve many biological functions, such as socio-coordinating and alarming functions. In particular, rat USVs have been established as a good model for studying emotional expressions. Since the discovery of USVs in rats, it has gradually been revealed that two families of juvenile and adult rat USVs with distinct acoustic features are closely linked to different affective states: 50-kHz (high-short) calls are associated with positive affective states, whereas 22-kHz (low-long) calls are associated with negative affective states. Although various subtypes within high-short and low-long calls have been proposed and used, most studies adopt the dichotomous framework of first dividing USVs into high-short or low-long calls. The diversity of rat USVs may have been overlooked due to this high-short / low-long dichotomous framework, as such labeling could discourage reporting of actual measured acoustic properties. Considering that several recent studies claim to have found new USV categories outside this framework, we conducted a systematic survey of descriptions of rat USVs in the literature. We identified 15 articles reporting USVs that are outside the dichotomous framework. Our results support the existence of diverse USVs beyond the dichotomy, highlighting the importance of research on a broader range of vocalizations that might reflect complex affective states beyond the simple distinction between positive and negative.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2023

An exploratory study of behavioral traits and the establishment of social relationships in female laboratory rats

There is growing evidence that social relationships influence individual fitness through various effects. Clarifying individual differences in social interaction patterns and determinants for such differences will lead to better understanding of sociality and its fitness consequences for animals. Behavioral traits are considered one of the determining factors of social interaction. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of individual behavioral traits on social relationship building in rats, a highly social species. Initially, the following behavioral characteristics were measured in individuals: tameness (glove test), activity (open field test), exploration (novel object test), sociability (three-chamber test), and boldness (elevated plus maze test). We then used DeepLabCut to behaviorally track three groups of four individuals (12 total) and analyze social behaviors such as approach and avoidance behaviors. Principal component analysis based on behavioral test results detected behavioral traits interpreted as related to exploration, boldness, activity, and tameness, but not sociability. In addition, behavioral tracking results showed consistent individual differences in social behavior indices such as isolation time and partner preference. Furthermore, we found that different components were correlated with different phases of social behavior; exploration and boldness were associated with the early stages of group formation, whereas activity was associated with later stages of relationship building. From these results, we derived hypothesize that personality traits related to the physical and social environment have a larger influence in the relationship formation phase, and the behavioral trait of activity becomes important in the maintenance phase of relationships. Future studies should examine this hypothesis by testing larger group sizes and ensuring there is no bias introduced into group composition.

animal behavior and cognition↗