Quantify Animal Behavior on Schedule-Induced Polydipsia Rats

• Main Author: 賴秋原
• Other Authors: 胡威志
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 1997
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/65920686416778165182

碩士 === 中原大學 === 醫學工程學系 === 85 === To study or investigate the effect of the stimulating and inhibiting of nerve system or pharmacological intervention is to observing animal behavior. In these studies, the important aspect is to analyze the time-space relationship. A system that will record Schedule-Induced Polydipsia (SIP) animal behaviors in digital format was devised. A software package to acquire data and to format the data storage of the animal behavior in the experiment was designed. A data analysis system was also provided to help researcher extracting the necessary information from recorded data. The experimental apparatus consists of a number of subsystems. The operand chamber is equipped with hopper, pellet and lick sensor and locomotion detector. The data acquisition and storage subsystem are self-designed that will run on IBM-PC. The discrete time marker of pellet drop, bar pressing for food and licking water are recorded at 200Hz. The image of rat's locomotion that detected by the VCO demodulated infrared signal was recorded at 10Hz. The food-deprived rats that were exposed to the intermittent food schedule (1 per minute) exhibit an excess drinking behavior. The animal behaviors that were monitored during the scheduled events are adjunctive, facultative and terminal behavior. The real time data is stored chronologically into the two types of data file. Therefore, a special data analysis procedure is designed to extract the results for the off-line statistic analysis. The extracted parameters for analyzing animal behaviors are drinking efficiency, inter-lick intervals, number of drinking bursts, size of burst, temporal distribution of licking, temporal distribution of bar pressing and locomotion.