Project
Experimental behavior technologies and animal training
The Experimental Behavior Technologies and Animal Training service project provides the mechanism and resources for producing state-of-the-art behavioral systems. It will make automated methods for experimental learning and memory testing available to CRC groups. These fully automated learning paradigms will allow measurement and experimental manipulation during specific phases of the learning process, including the phase of memory consolidation. This will include both virtual reality and operant cage based systems for both freely moving and head-fixed animals. We will develop a controlled reward and observation system for unsupervised training of multiple mice without head fixation that will be completely analogous to the online (head-fixed) experiments. This will include a system (touchscreen, 8-arm radial maze) for transgenic mice with conditional activation/deactivation of brain function either achieved through orally applied drug by ID chip-automated water dispensers or through integrated wireless optogenetic stimulation. The operant experimental systems will include hardware and software for automated operation and systems will be available for both rodents and Drosophila fruit flies.
Image Experimental set-up. Courtesy of York Winter
Team
Publications
The stop signal task for measuring behavioral inhibition in mice with increased sensitivity and high-throughput operation
Alican Caglayan, Katharina Stumpenhorst and York Winter
Front Behav Neurosci 15:777767 (2021)
Learning set formation and reversal learning in mice during high-throughput home-cage-based olfactory discrimination
Alican Caglayan, Katherina Stumpenhorst, York Winter
Front Behav Neurosci. 15:684936 (2021)
A CRISPR-Cas9–engineered mouse model for GPI-anchor deficiency mirrors human phenotypes and exhibits hippocampal synaptic dysfunctions
Miguel Rodríguez de los Santos, Marion Rivalan, Friederike S. David, Alexander Stumpf, Julika Pitsch, Despina Tsortouktzidis, Laura Moreno Velasquez, Anne Voigt, Karl Schilling, Daniele Mattei, Melissa Long, Guido Vogt, Alexej Knaus, Björn Fischer-Zirnsak, Lars Wittler, Bernd Timmermann, Peter N. Robinson, Denise Horn, Stefan Mundlos, Uwe Kornak, Albert J. Becker, Dietmar Schmitz, York Winter and Peter M. Krawitz
Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 118(2):e2014481118 (2021)