More Details on Rodent Visual Behavior

Download our 2008 Cosyne Poster

The Ratrix: Automated High Throughput Training We have developed a live-in version of our rodent visual behavior paradigm. This allows completely automated, high-throughput visual training and testing of rats and other rodents in their home cages. In addition to cost-effective hardware solutions, this project required a complex software development project for integrating stimulus control, reward delivery, data collection, and remote monitoring capacity.

Eye Tracking We use high-speed non-invasive infrared eye tracking to determine the location of visual stimuli relative to the retina. We find that rats spontaneously hold fixation for several seconds at a time (eye position traces, below left; scale bar = 3 sec). We can record eye positions in head-fixed rats with an accuracy of 0.2 degrees visual angle at kHz sampling rates (eye position estimates for three stimulus-evoked fixations, below right).

Chronic Recording We use standard (home-built or commercial) chronically implanted multi-electrode multidrives to record from single LGN neurons in freely behaving rats.

Head-fixed behavior We have also developed a novel 3-response nose-poke that allows the same tasks to be performed in a head-fixed configuration, which is necessary for some types of physiological experiments.

Credits Graduate students Philip Meier and Erik Flister have led the development of the rat preparation in our lab. Erik has been the lead on the software engineering of the ratrix, with lots of help from Phil and also programmer Fan Li. Taking the hardware from prototype to production and deployment was the work of Ginger Beriones. Phil has been the lead on head-fixing and eye tracking, with help from Erik and several undergraduates especially Holly Vo, Aria Jafari, Duc Nguyen and Erika Alvarez. The deployment of the Ratrix was made possible by the generous support of the JSMcDonnel Foundation.