Operant Chamber for administering alcohol
Another incredible week in stunning La Jolla, California. This was our first full week of working at the lab, and it was a long one. Monday was our longest day, as we ended up running approximately four separate tests. We began with an elevated plus maze test on another lab’s apparatus. This was done to see if ours was contaminated. We found conclusive evidence that our apparatus is, in fact, unusable for future testing. We were then taught to program and test the operant chambers to test alcohol dependence. Multiple alcohol tests were running this week, which meant a lot of cleaning and refilling the cages to keep the experiments happening on time.
In addition to helping run these tests, I got to sit in and record data for a special experiment on cocaine withdrawal. We were testing the irritability of rats coming off cocaine, some of which were treated with Deep Brain Stimulation to try to lessen the withdrawal symptoms. To test this we used the bottle brush test, which is basically sticking a brush in a box with a rat and spinning it around and on the rat to annoy it. The other researchers and I then recorded behavior that we saw. There were many behaviors, some of which were aggressive, while others were defensive. Aggressive behaviors included boxing, following the brush, biting it, and sniffing it. Defensive behaviors included escaping, digging, and climbing. The researchers had hypothesized that the rats would be very aggressive due to the intense withdrawal of cocaine, but the rats were very tame and defensive. Regardless, it was useful data for the study.
The interns and I messed up a bit this week when we put our rats in with two levers instead of one, which confused them into not pressing either. This is a minor setback, but means that we will have to retrain our rats to press levers again this week, which is a bummer.
Hanging out under the pacific beach pier
Outside of the lab much of my time has been spent on the beach, swimming and enjoying the sunshine. I have been taking lots of photos of surfers and sunsets, as one does in the beauty of California beaches. I’m looking forward to another exciting week.
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