Editorial: Improving reproducibility in behavioral neuroscience

[...]studying behavior-related disorders commonly implies inducing morphological, emotional, and/or cognitive disabilities in the animals, followed by exposure to stressful environmental contexts. [...]improving reproducibility in the field is mandatory, not only to improve the research output's quality but also to reduce the unnecessary use of laboratory animals. According to the author, even considering the heterogeneity of EE protocols [e.g., age of animal, type of enrichment, duration of stay in the EE; which, according to others, do not increase variability in outcome measures (Bayne and Wurbel, 2014; Bailoo et al., 2018)], the beneficial effect of it on the fear responses should still be observed. According to them, the behavioral phenotypes could be influenced by the features of the protocol applied, such as the light intensity, the duration of the exposure to the aversive stimulus, the apparatus, and the properties of the stressors used.