Figure 3

Depiction of the equipment used for assessment of the NSS. (a) Beam walk test. The healthy mouse will spontaneously cross 3-, 2- and 1-cm beams. The beam tests should start with the 3-cm beam and increase the level of difficulty by gradually reducing the beam width to 2 and 1 cm. (b) Beam for the beam balancing test. (c) The round stick balance test represents the most difficult test for mice. (d) The platform is used to evaluate the exploring behavior. Owing to their intrinsic inquisitiveness, a healthy mouse exits the platform within 2 min.