This collection includes raw data objects gathered in the course of 2 decades of research using an animal model of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), first described in Szechtman, H., Sulis, W., & Eilam, D. (1998). Quinpirole induces compulsive checking behavior in rats: a potential animal model of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Behavioral Neuroscience, 112(6), 1475-1485. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7044.112.6.1475.

This research employed a standardized paradigm, where each rat was tested in a large open field (160×160 cm and 60 cm high table without walls), with over 1700 subjects run for a total of nearly 20500 trials, each 55 min in duration, thus yielding nearly 19000 hr of testing in a large open field. As part of the standardized protocol, each trial was video-recorded by an overhead camera, the position of the rat's body center of mass extracted from the video records via computer vision algorithms (EthoVision software), and the obtained track files were subsequently processed using custom software to obtain measures of compulsive checking and locomotion. The available video and track files from these studies, as well as path plot of the routes of locomotion and the EthoVision work file are the raw data records included in the library. These records are named according to a structured nomenclature, and the files organized into a structured directory tree. Importantly, hierarchical keywords are used as meta-variables to annotate each trial, so that a search for particular keywords will retrieve the pertinent set of files. The complete library is available for analysis in novel ways, including extraction from the videos of any postural information of the rat and measures of ritual behavior of relevance to OCD. The comprehensive meta-variables allow a researcher to design their own study by selecting the pertinent trials from the available pool of records.

A video poster is available describing the motivation to build this library https://youtu.be/MZLpa5kbwbk. The video poster was presented at an online meeting of the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society in August, 2020. Note that while the intent for this library is to be used as one giant dataset, the raw data records are deposited as distinct studies, labelled Q17 to Q48, representing the historical acquisition of the data. Retrospectively, the studies are grouped into themes as Project_01 to Project_12. To emphasize that the collection of deposits in this library should be treated as one giant dataset, the meta-data describing attributes specific to a particular study, are presented as subcategories of the keyword HISTORY.