C3: Behavior Automation

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Project Summary/Abstract: Core 3, Behavior Automation The main goal of this U19 project is to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying working memory and decision-making. As a consequence, each research project in this application involves rodents trained on cognitively demanding tasks that require the animals to accumulate evidence to make decisions. All these animals are trained in the Behavior Automation Core’s central facility, which provides shared virtual-reality (VR) and non-VR behavioral rigs, standardizing behavior across the research projects. The first aim of this core is to provide this standardized behavioral training facility with cutting-edge efficiency and automation. As demand for our services increases, we will continue to expand its capacity. We have developed a miniature VR rig that will allow us to double the number of rigs in our space. As the training facility expands, the number of animals that each technician handles will increase as well, requiring us to develop new automation tools to ensure the health of the animals and the quality of the data. This core will develop and integrate new tools into the existing high-throughput workflow to reduce human error and improve technician interventions. We will also improve our systems to support and maintain experimental rigs; manage technician hiring, training, and scheduling to meet demand; and oversee technicians’ workflow, animal management, and facility regulatory compliance. The core’s second aim is to design a modular behavioral rig that meets diverse experimental needs. Rather than redesigning the rigs to accommodate new experiments, which would impose a substantial barrier to innovation, we plan to develop a modular rig that will provide a shared framework for diverse experimental needs. We will design and develop new modules, fitting them into the existing workflows or creating new workflows to store and share the generated data across all the research projects and other resource cores. Finally, the third aim is to provide behavioral resources for the neuroscience community. To share our methods with the broader scientific community, we are developing a website that contains comprehensive and easy-to-navigate documentation. This website will provide resources such as a detailed explanation of how to build experimental rigs, maintenance routines, a comprehensive description of facility workflow, how to set up the behavioral database and integrate it with the rigs, and animal workflows. By providing this information, we hope to facilitate wider standardization of these methods. This resource will enable researchers around the world to introduce automated training for well-controlled, cognitively demanding tasks in their own laboratories. In summary, our shared behavioral training facility will support the experimental components of all the research projects within this U19 program. More generally, we expect that our pioneering methods for automating and managing animal training, when shared with the broader community, will improve efficiency, rigor, and reproducibility in behavioral research across the field of neuroscience.