03/18/2026
Inactive but awake behaviour as indicating a depression-like state in mice. Laboratory mice can display ‘inactive but awake’ behaviour in their home-cage, being spontaneously motionless with eyes open and not interacting with their surroundings. Greater inactive but awake behaviour is typically more common in conventional (barren) housing than comparatively enriched environments and is associated with some depression-like features in mice. Researchers explored this in two strains of mice and found as expected, that conventionally-housed mice displayed more inactive but awake behaviour than those in enriched cages. Adding enrichment reduced this behaviour, while removing enrichment increased it. Immature hippocampal neuron density was lower in conventional compared to enriched cages, although only in the ventral region investigated. Greater inactive but awake behaviour predicted reduced immature neuron density in the dorsal region and these results warrant further investigation.
Read the article in Royal Society Open Science:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.251069
