About

Actimetrics was formed in 1998 by academic neuroscientists with years of experience at designing laboratory software.

Our goal is to create tools for the study of animal behavior that integrate seamlessly with the experiment. By working directly with many different behavioral scientists, we have designed our systems around the experiments that are currently driving the field and have tailored the features of each program to current lab practices. In addition, Actimetrics has pioneered a number of new analysis methods for behavioral experiments. The result has been a suite of easy-to-use programs that facilitate high-throughput testing, and yet are flexible enough to accommodate new experimental designs.

Many of our systems are now used in large scale mutagenesis screens or drug tests. And our users have given us excellent feedback, telling us that our systems have increased the rate and accuracy with which they can do experiments, or that Actimetrics software allows them to perform new experiments that they otherwise could not have done.

At Actimetrics, we design the software around the experiment, rather than forcing the user to design experiments around the software. We have found that general-purpose tracking software that tries to accommodate too many different tests can become inflexible and cumbersome. The tools needed to manage a water-maze experiment differ sharply from those used in open field testing; and the analyses needed for tail suspension differ from those used in object recognition. So, we have built individual applications around small numbers of closely related experiments, incorporating dozens of features that streamline the performance and analysis of just those experiments. These applications are easy to learn, easy for students and technicians to learn, a pleasure to use, and yet extremely powerful and adaptable. We offer these systems at affordable prices, so that labs can pick and choose the combination of programs that best suit their needs.

Another unique aspect of our approach is our explicit partnership with our users. We are continually updating our software based on your new ideas and feature requests, often within a few days. And we never charge for “custom” work, because we benefit as much or more from your ideas as you do from the new features that result. Our programs would not be what they are without this close interaction with users.

 

In November 2023, Actimetrics was acquired by Lafayette Instrument Company.

Lafayette Instrument Company has over 75 years of experience engineering, manufacturing high quality scientific instrumentation and data acquisition equipment for disciplines such as biology, neuroscience, pharmaceutical and medical research, physical therapy and rehabilitation, security, and law enforcement. By joining forces with Actimetrics, Lafayette Instrument reinforces its commitment to offer the life science research community experiment-focused software and instrumentation with unparalleled support.

“We have been working closely with Actimetrics for many years as both a supplier and customer, and we are thrilled to bring them into the Lafayette Instrument family.”

– Benjamin Mangrich, CEO, Lafayette Instrument

“I am excited to be joining Lafayette. The resources and support they provide will allow us to work more closely with the scientific community, help us to expand our existing programs, and to develop new systems to serve the growing fields of behavioral neuroscience and circadian biology.”

– Dr. David Ferster, Founder of Actimetrics