Sometimes my animals will stay put on one corner of the chamber. Is it ok to repeat a trial with the same animal, while counterbalancing the sides to avoid familiarity with the side-paired-with-stimulus? I want to give some of the more anxious animals another shot at the task, hoping they will explore the other side of the chamber...
Leandra - I have run multiple trials and tests on the same animal with no problem. We didn't average the results but simply indicated the multiple assessments. I have seen this done by others as well. Hope this helps. - Tony
Hi Anthony, thank you very much for the advice! I will keep this in mind for my experimental design. One question though--if you didn't average the results, how did you go about deciding which trial to pick as representative?
We didn't. We ran a preference test after each conditioning trial (we were assessing sensitization and wanted to see if conditioning was facilitated). Take a look at the paper that I attached. It should show the exact procedure that we used. - Tony
Hi Alessandra, Thank you for the information! The difference though is that my experiments are un-conditioned real time place preference...It is a novel exposure experiment with one side paired with optogenetic light activation. At any rate, these are good resources for me to know in the future if I plan a CPP test! Cheers,
Leandra
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Medicine
- Disease
- Disease Models
- Animal Models