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COST-TEATIME Newsletter, January 2023

Dear colleagues,

Welcome to the TEATIME COST Action newsletter for improving biomedical research by automated behaviour monitoring in the animal home-cage. In this edition we give an overview of this Action, talk about some of our accomplishments in 2022 and look forward to our plans for 2023.

Our Mission

To improve animal research and animal welfare for the sake of translational medicine. New monitoring technologies for laboratory animals will benefit biomedical research and ultimately patients.

Do you want to visit a laboratory in another country to work with home-cage monitoring for a week or more?
TEATIME offers grants of up to €4,000 for Short Term Scientific Missions (STSMs)

Apply for a grant

TEATIME Presentations in 2022

In 2022 COST Action members gave presentations at various International meetings including the Swiss Lab Animal Science Association meeting in Lausanne. These meetings are always a good opportunity for networking and promoting TEATIME.

See a list of meetings attended in 2022

Open Call for ITC Conference Grants
TEATIME is offering 4 ITC (Inclusiveness Target Country) Conference Grants (of up to €2,000 each) for young researchers and innovators to attend a high-level conference and present their work as a poster or oral presentation.

Apply for a grant

TEATIME Webinars

We have hosted two recent webinars; Dr. A. Kravitz “Open source approaches for studying home cage behaviour” & Dr. C. Ferland-Beckham “Modelling neuropsychiatric disorders in the laboratory: Why sex matters?”

These and more are available on demand via our YouTube channel.

We currently have three webinars coming up:

24.1.23 – 3 pm CET – WG2 webinar: Balint Kiraly, Balazs Hangya (Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungary): Efficient, stress-free learning of mice in a fully automated training system.
https://cost-eu.zoom.us/j/85971753727

28.2.23 – 3 pm CET – TEATIME webinar: Hannah Lapp (Univ Austin Texas, USA): AMBER: automated maternal behavior during early life in rodents (Summary: Using open-source deep learning tools and computational behavioral analysis to measure maternal behavior in the home cage.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBS2_9it__I

23.3.23 – 3 pm CET – TEATIME webinar: Iven Mücke-Heim (MPI Psychiatry, Germany): presentation of their recent review “Introducing a depression-like syndrome for translational neuropsychiatry: a plea for taxonomical validity and improved comparability between humans and mice”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01762-w

Watch our webinars

Key events in 2022

FENS Networking event
We held a special workshop to share with international behaviourists and other researchers, and inform about our future workshops and training events, that will take place in the next 3 years.

Training workshop
In September 2022 we held our first education, advice, networking and training workshop in HCM for academic researchers. The workshop was well attended. The TEATIME Advanced Training School will be 10-14 July 2023 in Oporto, Portugal.

Report on our Working Group meeting in Prague
October 2022 saw our first all action groups meeting in Prague. It was a good occasion for us to talk face to face and give updates on how the workstreams are progressing.

Report on Working Groups’ activities
There are five Working groups aligned to TEATIME, each group meets regularly throughout the year and focuses on its workstream. A brief overview for each Action stream can be found via the link below.

Read our reports

Development of an IntelliCage-based cognitive bias test for mice was authored by TEATIME colleagues and was the first Open Research publication

Plans for 2023

In 2023, you can find us at Scand-LAS 2023, European Brain and Behaviour Society and many more. Watch this space!

Find all upcoming events

We will be offering more training and education opportunities across 2023 both online and in person.

Find all upcoming training

Home Cage Monitoring System: a Working Definition

The Olog depicted above is a representation of the definition of Home Cage Monitoring. “A system that collects information on an animal which lives inside an enclosure that provides food, water, social contacts, and environmental enrichment”.

View a downloadable enhanced version of the olog

We hope you have found this newsletter interesting and informative. We would be very happy to hear from any of you with feedback and comments. Please also share this newsletter with your colleagues and if you have been forwarded this email and don’t want to miss future newsletters, then please subscribe. All new webinars will be announced on the website and via Twitter 2-3 weeks before the event so please watch the space!

On behalf of all members of the TEATIME Action,

Vootele Voikar – TEATIME Chair
Sara Wells – Grant Holder, TEATIME Vice-chair
Sabine Hölter-Koch – Science Communication Coordinator