Week 5

Welcome!

Week 5 was much like week 4 in terms of the work I was doing. I had completed collecting and analyzing all of the Day 2 data for cages 1, 3 and 5 (the cages without the device) and this week I started working on collecting data from the video for Day 1 in cages 1, 3 and 5. By this point I feel very comfortable watching the videos and I am starting to enjoy watching the mice do their thing all day. Although this cage was like the other Non-Divided cages in most ways, one particular mouse had a very peculiar aberrant behavior that was interesting to watch and largely inexplicable based on readings that I did after seeing this. One mouse, coincidentally the dominant one in the cage would start in the middle of the cage, drag himself over to the corner of the cage by his own tail and then pull himself back into the center of the cage while spinning in circles and biting his own tail. Although I have no idea why this mouse was acting this was, our lab definitely got a laugh out of it. Bret made the decision to keep that mouse in the study, despite his odd, unnatural behavior, to determine if aberrant behavior could be reduced by the enrichment devices we were testing. 

While most of my work this week was more of the same, our Thursday Lab meeting proved to be very engaging. After reading a published paper in a prestigious journal, the team proceeded to more or less rip the paper and its credibility to shreds. Not to be horrible, but to teach us the importance of having clean, clear, reproducible work and clear study designs that were scientific. This was interesting and hilarious and taught me a lot about how to proceed with research in a systematic and organized way to achieve maximum success from your project. 

This week I also learned how to cut and mount 0.10 mm thick slices of fresh frozen rat brain to slides for viewing, testing and further staining. This process was more involved than I expected it to be, but I had a great time learning how to do this technique and really enjoyed the process! I will be cutting more brains in the future :)

Have a great week! Thanks!

Tasha