Eco-HAB: New quality in research on neuronal basis of social behavior

How the brain controls social behaviors and what exactly the neuronal impairments causing its pathologies are, is yet to be determined. To better understand mechanisms in play, scientists perform thousands of tests of social interactions, usually conducted in mice. However, such assays are highly irreproducible, which significantly impedes making new discoveries. To address this issue scientists have built a murine “Big Brother”: a computerized system called Eco-HAB, designed to screen mice for impairments of social behavior.