The head-fixed behaving rat—Procedures and pitfalls

The Head-fixed Behaving Rat—Procedures and Pitfalls

This paper describes experimental techniques with head-fixed, operantly conditioned rodents that allow the control of stimulus presentation and tracking of motor output at hitherto unprecedented levels of spatio-temporal precision. Experimental procedures for the surgery and behavioral training are presented. We place particular emphasis on potential pitfalls using these procedures in order to ...

Running head: BEHAVING AS EXPECTED Behaving as Expected: Public Information and Fairness Norms

What is considered to be fair depends on context. Using a modified version of the Ultimatum Game, we demonstrate that both fair behavior and perceptions of fairness depend upon beliefs about what one ought to do in a situation – that is, upon normative expectations. We manipulate such expectations by creating informational asymmetries about the offer choices available to the Proposer, and find ...

Tracking whisker and head movements in unrestrained behaving rodents.

Due to recent advances that enable real-time electrophysiological recordings in brains of awake behaving rodents, effective methods for analyzing the large amount of behavioral data thus generated, at millisecond resolution, are required. We describe a semiautomated, efficient method for accurate tracking of head and mystacial vibrissae (whisker) movements in freely moving rodents using high-sp...

Running head: PITFALLS OF BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASE SEARCHING

Autonomous head-mounted electrophysiology systems for freely behaving primates.

Recent technological advances have led to new light-weight battery-operated systems for electrophysiology. Such systems are head mounted, run for days without experimenter intervention, and can record and stimulate from single or multiple electrodes implanted in a freely behaving primate. Here we discuss existing systems, studies that use them, and how they can augment traditional, physically r...