Abstract Unbiased, scalable behavioral phenotyping that captures multi-animal interactions in home-cage settings is increasingly needed. Here we present ‘IntelliProfiler’, a research workflow consisting of data processing scripts that extract locomotor activity and pairwise proximity from a commercially available, previously validated, high-resolution radio frequency identification floor plate. IntelliProfiler is not a standalone system; it operates on data acquired with the Phenovance floor plate and is not yet validated with other hardware configurations. The workflow reconstructs individual trajectories and positions of multiple mice, enabling long-term assessment of locomotor activity and social spacing. In proof-of-concept analyses, male mice placed in a novel cage environment maintained greater inter-animal distances than female mice, an effect that strengthened as group size increased. Aging reduced locomotor activity in a group size-dependent manner and altered proximity patterns. In addition, offspring of aged fathers (a paternal-aging autism spectrum disorder model) exhibited hyperactivity and increased social distance relative to controls, consistent with autism spectrum disorder-related phenotypes and motivating further investigations. Together, these findings demonstrate that IntelliProfiler workflow provides a practical and versatile approach for screening group dynamics and quantifying complex social behaviors in neuroscience research.
Ochi et al. (Fri,) studied this question.