Nov 16, 2025
Mouse Paw Placement Assay in Glass Cylinder for Unilateral Parkinsonism
- Roberto Garcia Swinburn1,
- Ernest Arenas1
- 1Karolinska Institute Stockholm
- SOX6 mDA differentiation
Protocol Citation: Roberto Garcia Swinburn, Ernest Arenas 2025. Mouse Paw Placement Assay in Glass Cylinder for Unilateral Parkinsonism. protocols.io https://dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.4r3l216xxg1y/v1
License: This is an open access protocol distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Protocol status: Working
We use this protocol and it's working
Created: September 10, 2025
Last Modified: November 16, 2025
Protocol Integer ID: 226943
Keywords: mouse paw placement assay in glass cylinder, mouse paw placement assay, grafted mice, unilateral parkinsonism this protocol, unilateral parkinsonism, mice, cylinder wall test, glass cylinder, paw
Abstract
This protocol describes the cylinder wall test used for our analysis of hemiparkinsonian grafted mice.
Troubleshooting
Preparation of Environment
Set up the 12 cm diameter glass cylinder in a quiet room. You can also set several to record several mice at the same time. If so, do not record mice from different cages at the same time.
Illuminate the area using red light to minimize stress for the animals. If you have an infrared camera, discard this step and record in the dark.
Set a recording camera pointing at the cylinders to capture all of them at the same time. Recommended 1080p or 4K, although any can do as long as you can discern paws at x8 zoom.
Optional: Set mirrors on blind spots to visualize better paw placements. Especially helpful if the video is not too high quality.
Animal Recording
15m
Gently place the animal inside the glass cylinder.
Begin video recording immediately after placing the animal in the cylinder. Record for 15 minutes.
15m
Recover mice and place back into home cage. Clean cylinder with ethanol 70%, dry with paper towel and let air-dry for 5 minutes to avoid strong odours to following mice.
Repeat steps 5-7 until all mice have been recorded.
Video Analysis
Recover data and open videos with video player. Recommended VLC media player.
Play back the recorded video at 8× speed. Count forepaw contacts with glass cylinder.
Analyse only unilateral full paw contacts with the glass surface. Exclude any paw dragging (paws are not fully in contact and are mantained on the glass for some time) or incomplete paw contact. Mouse should be leaning against the cylinder for positive contact.
Data Recording
Calculate percentage of contralateral posivite contacts from total number of positive contacts.