Week 2 - 6/12/2017

Week 2

As my second week began, I knew it was about to get a lot more interesting because I was added on protocol. This meant that I was now able to handle the animals. At the Behavioral Research Lab they conduct multiple studies on the rats and fish they have, but my time here will be focused on two main projects.

The first project is the NICHES study, and details about the study can be found here. NICHES stands for the study of "neurodevelopment and improving children's health following environmental tobacco smoke exposure." Currently with this project we are running the rats through a program called the attention task (more details to follow in next week’s blog) and then studying their sexual behavior and neurotoxicology.

The second project is the Templeton study, which is a study of how THC affects epigenetics. We are currently studying offspring of males who were exposed to THC orally. We are running them through multiple behavioral tests. Again, more details on the tests and progress of the study will be detailed in upcoming weekly blogs.

Although I was added to protocol this week, a lot of what I did was basic and simple things to make sure the rats were being taken care of. I spent a few days making cages, changing cages, marking the rat's tales so we can tell which rat is which, weighing them, feeding them, and checking on them. I realized that no matter where you go in life you are going to need to complete tasks that you do not always want to because they seem mundane, boring, or not important enough. But without all of these simple tasks completed, not only do the rats not live good lives, but no testing would be able to be completed. Millions of lives would not be able to be helped with research just because I didn't want to do something simple and easy. So even though it was boring at points to just be changing cages, I knew it was just as important as running tests. I did get to run one test this week--it is called an elevated plus-maze. I completed this task with one fellow assistant. During the task we timed when the rats would stay in the open ends, when they stay in the closed ends, and when they cross from open arm to open arm or closed arm to closed arm. All in all, even though this week wasn't what I expected, I still learned a lot and obtained a greater appreciation for all of the research that is completed throughout the world. 

The elevated plus maze

The elevated plus maze