Quantitative evaluation of MPTP-treated nonhuman parkinsonian primates in the HALLWAY task

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder. An experimental model of this disease is produced in nonhuman primates by the administration of the neurotoxin 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP). In this work, we put forward a new quantitative evaluation method that uses video recordings to measure the displacement, gate, gross and fine motor performance of freely moving subjects. Four Vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops) were trained in a behavioral observation hallway while being recorded with digital video cameras from four different angles. After MPTP intoxication the animals were tested without any drug and after 30 and 90 min of Levodopa/Carbidopa administration. Using a personal computer the following behaviors were measured and evaluated from the video recordings: displacement time across the hallway, reaching time towards rewards, ingestion time, number of attempts to obtain rewards, number of rewards obtained, and level of the highest shelf reached for rewards. Our results show that there was an overall behavioral deterioration after MPTP administration and an overall improvement after Levodopa/Carbidopa treatment. This demonstrates that the HALLWAY task is a sensitive and objective method that allows detailed behavioral evaluation of freely moving monkeys in the MPTP Parkinson's disease model.