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Figure caption: The ROBucket can train mice to respond for sucrose. (a) Number of responses on the active (closed circles) and inactive (open circles) during the first five 1-h training sessions. (b) Number of responses on the active (black bars) and inactive (white bars) during the first and last day of each animal’s training. Data are expressed as mean ± SEM. Asterisks indicate significant within-subject difference (* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01), analyzed by a post hoc two-tailed paired t-test.
Macarena Churruca, a grad student in Chile sent me this photo of a modification that puts the ROBucket electronics on a larger box, and mounts them the the outside!
She also sent a video!
I was asked by a researcher in Chile how to read from the photointerrupter on the center port (where sucrose is dispensed). I wrote a quick update (available in the files area) that activates the center port. It shows the Active (A), Inactive (I), Center (C) and Rewards (Rew) on the screen during trials, and writes a new column "Center" to the CSV files.
Shawn Minnig and his colleagues recently used ROBuckets to study learning in transgenic mice to better understand Huntington's disease. They made a very nice modification to improve the mounting of ROBucket in the actual Bucket, and also designed a sound attenuating enclosure system for ROBuckets. And they released all of their modifications as open source! It's great to see this!
I was contacted by a couple people about ROBucket over the last year, and decided to update its code and make it a bit easier for people to use it.
Unfortunately, Adafruit made two versions of their Arduino SD shield. In the ROBucket paper we used version 1 of the shield, which was discontinued later that year. Adafruit made several improvements in version 2, but unfortunately the original ROBucket code can not run with this version without modifications. While making these modifications I ended up rewriting the code with better commenting so it should be easier to read and modify.
Full code here, main loop sans functions below. Feedback welcome!
Lex Kravitz
void loop() {
updateDisplay();
readPokes();
if (ratio_Met) {
dispense();
timeout();
}
}
1. Print out the Adobe Illustrator files for the front and side panel on plain paper or removable labels (8½” x 11”).
2. Place the templates on the bucket, with the side panel to the right of the front panel.
3. Drill seven 1/8” holes and two 5/16” holes where shown on the templates.
Label the signal wire for each “L” (for left), “C” (for center), and “R” (for right).
NOTE: You can use any photo-interrupter you want, but you may have to modify the mounting holes in the 3D housing.
The ROBucket box is very useful for working with mice in different learning modalities. There were some improvements we made:
1. There are changes in the voltage of the current, that is why a diode is welded in the solenoid valve to give stability.
2. It is very important, clean every time the solenoid valve is used, with distilled water.
3. In the conditioning extinction test, no reward is granted, to avoid damaging the solenoid valve, it must be disconnected.
4. The Arduino could be programmed to register the reward. That is, when the mouse does an active nose poke and then a poke in the center. The sum of both must be recorded as a reward.
Ford Sleeman
Edward Li
martin
Tom Dowad
Do you think this would work with rats? I haven't done nose poking with rats so I am not sure if the nose poke holes would accommodate them as well. Thank you!