Multi-Week Digital Home Cage Monitoring Reduces Noise and Enhances Reproducibility

Reproducibility is a persistent challenge in preclinical research. We used multi-week rodent machine vision home cage monitoring at three different pharmaceutical companies to examine factors governing replication of genotype differences in activity. Interlaboratory replication of genotype effects was surprisingly high. Longer study durations reduced noise, improving replication and reducing replicable sample sizes. These findings demonstrate the potential of long-term home cage digital monitoring as a method to enhance reproducibility.