Assessing the effects of 5-HT2A and 5-HT5A receptor antagonists on DOI-induced head-twitch response in male rats using marker-less deep learning algorithms

Previous drug discrimination studies demonstrated that the 5-HT_5A receptor antagonists attenuated the interoceptive cue of a potent hallucinogen LSD, suggesting their anti-hallucinatory effects. Nonetheless, the present results were not surprising and support the head-twitch response as selective for 5-HT_2A and not 5-HT_5A receptor activation. We conclude that the DeepLabCut and SimBA toolkits offer a high level of objectivity and can accurately and efficiently identify compounds that induce or inhibit head-twitch responses, making them valuable tools for high-throughput research.