ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2014
Wheel running in the wild.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 128 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
128 citing papers in PubMed.
- Methods for measuring neural activity during voluntary wheel running.Journal of neuroscience methods · 2026Article
- Nucleus Accumbens D1 Receptor Neurons Contribute to Emotional and Metabolic Adaptation to Chronic Hypoxia.Neuroscience bulletin · 2026Article
- Voluntary wheel running in male mice mitigates select hyperglycemia-induced depressive-like behaviors and modulates BDNF andBrain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2026Article
- Mouse Bio-behavioral Phenotyping Using a Digital Homecage Framework for Long-timescale, High-resolution, and Multi-factor Data Collection and Analytics.Research square · 2026Article
- Aging reduces motivation through decreased Bdnf expression in the ventral tegmental area.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Article
- Presence of a home cage running wheel, but not wheel running per se, decreases social motivation in adult C57BL/6J female mice.PloS one · 2026Article
- The Impacts of Housing Conditions on the Cardiopulmonary and Neurobehavioral Responses of Mice to High Temperature and Wildfire Smoke.Environmental science & technology · 2025Article
- Neuromedin U Deficiency Disrupts Daily Testosterone Fluctuation and Reduces Wheel-Running Activity in Rats.Endocrinology · 2025Article
- Tracking Individual Running Metrics in Mice Using a Voluntary Wheel Running Protocol that Minimizes Social Isolation.Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE · 2025Article
- The metabolic basis of cancer-related fatigue.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2025Review
- Tissue-resident skeletal muscle macrophages promote recovery from viral pneumonia-induced sarcopenia in normal aging.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Tendon regeneration deserves better: focused review onFrontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2025Review
- Volitional and forced running ability in mice lacking intact primary motor cortex.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2025Article
- Dissociable control of motivation and reinforcement by distinct ventral striatal dopamine receptors.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- Catch me if you can: free-living mice show a highly flexible dodging behaviour suggestive of intentional tactical deception.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- The Switchmaze: an open-design device for measuring motivation and drive switching in mice.Peer community journal · 2024Article
- What Can Laboratory Animal Facility Managers Do to Improve the Welfare of Laboratory Animals and Laboratory Animal Facility Staff? A German Perspective.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- PAW, a cost-effective and open-source alternative to commercial rodent running wheels.HardwareX · 2024Article
68 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The importance of exercise for health and neurogenesis is becoming increasingly clear. Wheel running is often used in the laboratory for triggering enhanced activity levels, despite the common objection that this behaviour is an artefact of captivity and merely signifies neurosis or stereotypy. If wheel running is indeed caused by captive housing, wild mice are not expected to use a running wheel in nature. This however, to our knowledge, has never been tested. Here, we show that when running wheels are placed in nature, they are frequently used by wild mice, also when no extrinsic reward is provided. Bout lengths of running wheel behaviour in the wild match those for captive mice. This finding falsifies one criterion for stereotypic behaviour, and suggests that running wheel activity is an elective behaviour. In a time when lifestyle in general and lack of exercise in particular are a major cause of disease in the modern world, research into physical activity is of utmost importance. Our findings may help alleviate the main concern regarding the use of running wheels in research on exercise.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.