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Rodent Behavior Facility

Equipment

equip Assessment of working and reference spatial memory:

Our mouse testing facility is equipped with an eight-arm radial maze (Med Associates, Inc., Modular Mouse Maze). The maze is fully automated to provide maximal data output. The central hub houses intelligence manipulanda, while each arm in the maze is equipped with software-controlled guillotine doors, photobeam sensors at both the entry and end points of each arm, and sensors to detect entry into the feeder aperture located at the end of each arm.
equip Assessment of spontaneous motor behavior:

For measuring both gross and fine motor movements, the facility offers a bank of four, force-plate actometers (cf. Fowler et al. 2001, Journal of Neuroscience Methods, pp 107-124). The force-plate actometer is an instrument applicable to a wide array of motor measurements, including locomotion, tremor, path stereotypies, focused stereotypies, wall rearing, and rotations. Furthermore, data may be finely analyzed across multiple dimensions in real time. These actometers are useful for assessing motor manifestations of genetic alterations, progressive developmental disease, or pharmacological challenge.
equip Assessment of reward-response learning and complex behavior:

Operant methods have long been used to examine cognitive abilities and complex learning and performance. The transgenic mouse testing facility operates a bank of 6, two-lever operant chambers for mice (Med Associates, Inc., Modular Mouse Chamber). These chambers allow for the programming of many complex learning tasks and schedules of reinforcement. In this way, genetic differences that contribute to learning performance or deficits can be examined with low labor costs and high through put because of the computer-based automation of the procedures and quantation of the behavior.
equip

Assessment of learned, fine motor control:

In addition to the operant procedures discussed above, the facility also possesses a set of paw-force transduction operant chambers. The apparatus complements the whole-body force actometer described above by focusing measurement on forelimb topography (force and duration of individual responses). These methods are useful in the detection of early motor deficits related to fine movements that may appear before whole-body deficits can be observed. A related apparatus is also available for the measurement of grip strength (apparatus not shown). Like the paw-force operant task, the grip strength procedure is useful for the measurement of the microstructure of the topography involved in fine motor movements and integrity of function in the extremity, which would be concommitants of upper spinal motoneuron disease (e.g., seen in ALS).