FACILITIES & OTHER RESOURCES
Updated: 1 September 2020
Fields Relevant for the Rodent Behavioral Core (RBC)
RODENT BEHAVIORAL CORE (RBC)
The Rodent Behavioral Core (RBC), one of the Emory Integrated Core Facilities (EICF), provides rodent behavioral analysis services. Dr. David Weinshenker is the Scientific Director and Dr. Jason Schroeder is the Core Director who runs the day to day operations and provides services for investigators. The core facility has approximately 1300 sq. ft. of space dedicated to this core within the larger Division of Animal Resources (DAR) facility in the Whitehead Biomedical Research Building. The core space includes three mouse and/or rat testing rooms, and isolated cubicles for particularly sensitive tests. At present, the following items and tests have been developed and validated by the Core and/or the Weinshenker lab:
Locomotor activity
1. Novelty-induced locomotor activity
2. Circadian rhythm
Arousal and attention
1. Behavioral sleep latency
2. Latent inhibition
Coordinated movement
1. Rotarod
2. Grid performance test
3. Automated gait analysis
4. Beam traversal
5. Pole test
6. Abnormal involuntary movements (AIMs) scoring
Learning and memory
1. Morris water maze
2. Radial arm maze
3. Y-maze
4. Social memory/discrimination test paradigm
5. Novel Object Recognition
6. Fear Conditioning
Anxiety/Stress
1. Elevated plus maze
2. Light/dark box
3. Open field
4. Social defeat
Depression
1. Forced swim test
2. Tail suspension test
3. Novelty-suppressed feeding
4. Chronic unpredictable stress
5. Sucrose consumption/preference
6. Social defeat
Seizure susceptibility
1. Flurothyl seizure chamber
2. Kanic acid seizures
3. Pentylenetetrazole seizures
4. Bicuculline seizures
5. Audiogenic seizures
6. Electrical kindling
7. Increasing current electroshock seizures
8. Pilocarpine seizures
Reward/Reinforcement
1. Drug-induced locomotor activity
2. Drug-induced stereotypy
3. Sensitization
4. Conditioned place preference
5. Oral self-administration
6. Operant drug self-administration and reinstatement
7. Operant drug discrimination
8. Operant cocaine vs. food choice
Aggression
1. Resident-intruder aggression
2. Social defeat
Sensorimotor Gating
1. Acoustic startle
2. Prepulse inhibition
General hardware/software
1. 24 rat operant self-administration chambers (Med Associates) (6 of these are equipped with laser systems for optogenetics – see next line below)
2. 6 OEM 150mW 473nm Laser systems for optogenetics
3. 4 shock generators
4. 24 SDI automated locomotor activity chambers
5. 2 SDI automated conditioned place preference chambers
6. Clever Systems automated MazeScan software
7. Video-EEG electrical seizure apparatus (two Grass S44 stimulators, two Grass SIU5 stimulus isolators, two Grass CCU1 constant current units, oscilloscope)
8. 6 rat cages equipped with running wheels