ArticleBMC research notes2015
Analytical strategies for the marble burying test: avoiding impossible predictions and invalid p-values.
Article in BMC research notes, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Dynamics of Radiation-Induced Changes in Mice Behavior in the Marble Burying Test after Fractionated Gamma Irradiation.Bulletin of experimental biology and medicine · 2025Article
- Cognitive and anti-inflammatory effects ofFrontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- The zona incerta regulates burying behavior and normalizes anxiety-like behavior in inescapable stressful male mice by object cue.Neurobiology of stress · 2025Article
- Canagliflozin Ameliorates Oxidative Stress and Autistic-like Features in Valproic-Acid-Induced Autism in Rats: Comparison with Aripiprazole Action.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Prophylactic Effect of Bovine Colostrum on Intestinal Microbiota and Behavior in Wild-Type and Zonulin Transgenic Mice.Biomedicines · 2022Article
- In pursuit of biomarkers for predicting susceptibility to activity-based anorexia in adolescent female rats.The International journal of eating disorders · 2022Article
- Sex-Dependent Signatures, Time Frames and Longitudinal Fine-Tuning of the Marble Burying Test in Normal and AD-Pathological Aging Mice.Biomedicines · 2021Article
- Functional and epigenetic phenotypes of humans and mice with DNMT3A Overgrowth Syndrome.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Impaired hypothalamic feedback dysregulates brain glucocorticoid signaling in genetically-selected Marchigian Sardinian alcohol-preferring rats.Addiction biology · 2021Article
- Combining Animal Welfare With Experimental Rigor to Improve Reproducibility in Behavioral Neuroscience.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2021Review
- The Chronic Treatment With 5-HTNeurochemical research · 2020Article
- DNMT3A Haploinsufficiency Results in Behavioral Deficits and Global Epigenomic Dysregulation Shared across Neurodevelopmental Disorders.Cell reports · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe marble burying test is used to measure repetitive and anxiety-related behaviour in rodents. The number of marbles that animals bury are count data (non-negative integers), which are bounded below by zero and above by the number of marbles present. Count data are often analysed using normal linear models, which include the t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) as special cases. Linear models assume that the data are unbounded and that the variance is constant across groups. These requirements are rarely met with count data, leading to 95% confidence intervals that include impossible values (less than zero or greater than the number of marbles present), misleading p-values, and impossible predictions. Transforming the data or using nonparametric methods are common alternatives but transformations do not perform well when many zero values are present and nonparametric methods have several drawbacks.
findingsThe problems with using normal linear models to analyse marble burying data are demonstrated and generalised linear models (GLMs) are introduced as more appropriate alternatives.
conclusionsGLMs have been specifically developed to deal with count and other types of non-Gaussian data, are straightforward to use and interpret, and will lead to more sensible inferences.
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