On June 20-21, 2000 in Warrenton, Virginia, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) convened a workshop to establish priorities for phenotyping the mouse nervous system and behavior. The specific purpose was to define strategies for implementing reliable and high-throughput assays to characterize inbred strains within multiple phenotypic domains of nervous system function and complex behavior; identify batteries of phenotyping assays to maximize cost-benefit ratios, breadth of coverage and detection of subtle phenotypic alterations in the nervous system function and complex behavior of mutants produced by random mutagenesis; discuss the utility of a public database from which comprehensive phenotypic information on both inbred strains and mutants would be widely available to the neuroscience community; and discuss coordination of these activities with those being accomplished under ongoing NIH efforts.

A draft of the executive summary and recommendations of the workshop is presented at this link.