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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 May 22.
Published in final edited form as: Behav Neurosci. 2018 Mar 1;132(2):88–98. doi: 10.1037/bne0000233

Figure 4. Population level ‘preferences’ for non-ethologically relevant odors are not observed at the individual mouse level.

Figure 4.

(A) Histogram of mean I-values which control for the influences of port location and testing day habituation (see Materials and Methods) illustrating that as a population, mice display preferences towards some odors more so than others. The mean I-value across all mice and stimuli (including mineral oil) was 20.0 +/− 4.49 s.d. (B) Spark plot of each mouse’s I-value showing that at the individual animal level, animals display their highest I-value (green bars) towards a variety of non-ethologically relevant odors. Downward arrowheads indicate which mice displayed their highest I-value towards thioglycolic acid, which according to the population-level data in (A) is the ‘preferred’ odor. Note that most mice did not contribute their highest I-value towards thioglycolic acid. Pie chart in (B) presents the % of mice which displayed their highest I-value towards thioglycolic acid (green) compared to those which did not (blue). One mouse contributed an I-value of 44.7 to the population-level effect of thioglycolic acid in (A).