Depression-Related Behavioral Tests.

Overlapping characteristics between human depressive phenotypes and mouse behaviors has led to the creation of mouse models that aim to investigate the pathophysiology and treatment of unipolar depression. Behavioral tests in mice are used to assess and quantify the extent to which a mouse model displays a depression-like phenotype. The forced swim test and tail suspension test, sucrose preference test, and novelty suppressed feeding tests all aim to measure different components of depression. However, each one of these tests has different strengths and weaknesses in terms of predictive, face and construct validities. Furthermore, the responses to these tests vary greatly depending on strain of mouse. Depression-related behavioral tests are an extremely useful investigative tool in unearthing causes and predicting treatment outcomes in human depression, but as this review demonstrates, the comprehension of the finer details are extremely important in the design, analysis, and evaluation of such mouse studies. Curr. Protoc. Mouse Biol. 2:119-127 © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.