Principle of the test

The tail suspension test allows a fast and reliable screening of the psychotropic properties (anti-depressants, sedatives) of drugs on rodents. 

The tail-suspension test was developed as an alternative to the Forced Swimming test, yet the concept remains the same. Rodents, suspended by their tail, innately attempt to escape from this aversive situation. However,following failed attempts to escape, they experience despair and become immobile. The magnitude of immobility is considered to be correlated with the depressive-like state of the subjects and is significantly decreased by antidepressants.

The parameters currently evaluated are:

• total time spent immobile
• latency to the first event of immobility
• etc...

NEW Tail Suspension Box Optimized for Video-Tracking Use!

The Panlab Tail suspension box (TST) consists in a box with 3 compartments, so to carry out experiment simultaneously on 3 experimental subjects at the same time.

NEW Modular Background Panels! The box is provided with modular background panels with 3 choices of colour (black/grey and white/translucid panels)

The box is also made of non-reflecting and odour-resistance material for an optimized use with a video-tracking system. Our user-friendly SMART video-tracking sofware is our recommend solution to run, record, analyse and replay the experiments at will.