There are numerous simple rodent behavioral assays that appear to resemble “ataxia” in the broadest sense, and those who use some of them frequently cite “balance” as the construct targeted. Some work has been done that attempts to map specific behaviors (e.g., wobbling gait) to specific neural circuits. Many of these behaviors show deficits after intoxication with an administered alcohol dose. However, very little work has specifically addressed the intoxicating effects of alcohol in rodents at a mechanistic level. In all cases where one has looked, all these behaviors reflect genetic differences in sensitivity to alcohol. However, when 8 inbred mouse strains were screened for sensitivity to alcohol-induced intoxication using 18 variables derived from 11 separate behavioral assays, the pattern of results suggested that alcohol sensitivity in most tasks was influenced by task-specific sets of genes (Crabbe et al. 2005). That is, the genetic correlations across tasks were low—strains that were very intoxicated on one measure were not necessarily very intoxicated on another. The tasks were diverse, and included activity stimulation and wobbling gait. Another test was the rotarod, where
