Hector working with one of the stained mouse brains.
This week in the lab we spent a lot of time focusing on the beginning of the experiments. The lab received more rats. We spent a couple hours weighing, labeling, and handling each rat. This set of rats was a lot more restless than the set we got before. One rat that bit Hector twice and nobody else was able to grab it. Once we finished with the rats, we prepped the boxes for the sessions and for our first overnight session. The purpose of the overnight session is to get the rats used to using the levers and associating it with a reward. For the overnight session we only put out one lever and provided them with water. We had a couple rats that did not press the lever very many times so we put them in for a second overnight session when we ran the second half of our group. After the overnight sessions were completed, we ran sessions that were two hours long. There is only one lever out for these sessions as well. The difference between the overnight and two hours is that the alcohol is connected instead of water. Other major projects that happened this week were the surgeries and profusions. Profusions are how the animals’ brains are collected, in a humane way, and preserved so they can be stained later. The surgeries were to place the catheters in the rats for an upcoming project that another intern will be starting soon. I was not able to handle watching either procedure, since I do not handle those things very well. Since I was not working on what everyone else was working on, Molly had me work on my final presentation.
Molly preparing the rats for surgery.
The building we work in everyday.
We did not do much outside of the lab this week. The fatigue from the previous weeks hit Kacy and me pretty hard so we used this week to recover and get ready for what this next week will throw at us.
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