BEHAVIORAL TESTING FACILITY (BTF)

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Behavioral Testing Facility The main goal of the Behavioral Testing Facility (BTF) is to cover a need associated with the development of the basic sciences and clinical community at the Universidad Central del Caribe (UCC). Additionally, BTF has extended its services to all Puerto Rico's entire scientific community. We are proposing five specific aims for the renewal proposal. Specific Aim 1. To foster the usage of BTF by basic scientists and clinicians in Puerto Rico. Enhancement in the use of the facility will be addressed by the integration of two additional functional units within the BTF core: the Human Behavioral Phenotyping Unit (HBPU) and the Animal Behavioral Phenotyping Unit (ABPU). Specific Aim 2. To continue providing highly productive working conditions for the use of the existing equipment and the environment necessary for both ongoing and new projects oriented to translational research. Specific Aim 3. To continue the training of research assistants and other personnel and BTF's users in methods, equipment, experimental protocols and software used in behavioral experiments. This training will include new internet based methodologies to provide even greater access to our facilities. Specific Aim 4. To intensify the collaborative research at the UCC community, and between UCC and other local and Continental USA Universities, by effectively marketing the facility through the cooperative research network "Research Centers in Minority Institutions Translational Research Network" (http://www.rtrn.net) which is facilitating the translational research in health disparity areas. Specific Aim 5. To help the scientific community involved in experiments to acquire data and visualize animal behavior and/or psychomotor alteration related to translational research by maintaining updated the analytical methodologies. Our Behavioral Testing Facility has served > 30 researchers, and currently 10 investigators are using the facility Four new proposals recently submitted to federal agencies are including usage of BTF in their experiments.