About The OpenBehavior Project and the Open Source Movement

Free, Open-Source Tools for Animal Behavior Research

Welcome to OpenBehavior! Launched in 2016, the OpenBehavior project is your one-stop shop for advancing research in neuroscience. We curate a database of the latest open-source tools for studying animal behavior. Find everything you need through blog posts on new tools and tutorials & resources for building them. We aim to empower your research, so you can use the latest tools as quickly as possible, develop innovative methods, and accelerate behavioral neuroscience.

The project is currently supported by the National Science Foundation through grant DBI 1948181.

You follow us at www.openbehavior.com and through our account on Twitter/X @OpenBehavior. If you would like to get in touch our team, please send us an email message at openbehavior@gmail.com.

What is Open Source and what are the benefits?

Open Source Tools

Open Access: Open-source projects share their design files and source code (software) freely. Anyone can view, modify, and improve them.
Collaboration: Open source fosters a community of researchers working together. This leads to faster innovation and problem-solving.
Cost-Effective: Replicate existing tools at a fraction of the price compared to commercial products.
Customization: Build and modify tools to perfectly fit your specific research needs.

Benefits of the Open-Source Approach

Rapid Access: Use new methods as soon as possible. No need to wait for a commercial vendor to make a new device or provide new software.
Flexibility: Go beyond the limitations of pre-built commercial tools and explore new research questions.
Collaboration: Join a global community of researchers sharing knowledge and expertise in behavioral neuroscience and related methods.

You can read about our approach in this paper:

White SR, Amarante LM, Kravitz AV, Laubach M. The future is open: open-source tools for behavioral neuroscience research. eneuro. 2019 Jul 1;6(4). https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0223-19.2019

Latest Tweets and Blog Posts from OpenBehavior

Latest Tweets on OpenSource Projects

Video Repository: Change in license and upcoming activities

This week, we report on a change in the licenses for the videos in our repository. We also report plans to expand our efforts to help researchers access video data sets from neuroscience experiments. We are delighted to find that our video repository has assisted many...

Printed Circuit Boards

Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are the flat, often green boards found inside most electronic devices and in microcontrollers such as Arduino. They provide a way to connect electronic components together and contain etched copper traces that act as miniaturized...

Resources for learning electronics

This is a post with some good news that we wanted to share with the community.Luis Garcia is a Boy Scout. He used resources on the OpenBehavior website for his Electronics Merit Badge. Our resources page includes links to websites where you can order electronics and...

Open-source tools: stuck & struggling?

At our pre-SfN workshop on open-source tools, participants discussed the need for more interactions among researchers using the tools. Sometimes people get help with their projects by posting on social media. But not everyone sees these posts. Online forums...

A Summary on the 2023 Open-Source Tools Workshop

The OpenBehavior project organized a workshop on open-source tools on November 10 and 11 as an official satellite event of the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. The workshop was held at American University in Washington DC, with additional support from...

The OpenBehavior Team

Mark Laubach, PhD

Professor, American University – Washington, DC.

Co-founded The OpenBehavior Project in 2016

Alexxai Kravitz, PhD

Professor, Washington University – St. Louis, MO.

Co-founded The Open Behavior Project in 2016

Jibran Khokhar, PhD

Professor, University of Western Ontario, ON, Can.

Contributor for OpenBehavior

Kevin Chavez Lopez, BS

Doctoral Student, American University – Washington DC

Managing the 3D print repository, content creation, and website management

Jensen Palmer, MS

Doctoral Student, American University – Washington DC

Content creation and website management

Abby St Jean

Undergraduate Student, American University – Washington DC

Content creation and new video collection

Linda Amarante, PhD

Postdoctoral Researcher – NIMH, Bethesda, MD

Contributor for OpenBehavior

Sean Bradley, PhD

Staff Scientist, NIMH (Contractor) – Bethesda, MD

Contributor for OpenBehavior

Jude Frie, BAS, B.Sc.H.

Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Western Ontario, ON, Can.

Contributor for OpenBehavior

Samantha White, PhD

Postdoctoral Researcher – NIMH, Bethesda, MD

Website Design and Contributor for OpenBehavior

Former Contributors

Wambura Fobbs
Meagan Mitchell
Kyra Swanson
Hannah Goldbach
Michael Preston
Julia Licholai
Hao Chen
Marty Isaacson
Cammi Rood
Lan Hooton

Funding Support

NSF 1948181 to ML and AVK, 2021-24

NASA DC Space Grant Consortium to ML, Summer 2017

Always looking for more support.