debut video capture free version limitations

This facilitates the comparison of performance within and across a cohort of animals. Learning can be tracked by monitoring turning, location, response times, and directional swimming of individual fish. Either approach can enable precise, multi-day scheduling of training, including timing, location, and intensity of stimulus parameters and the feeder. Alternatively, a similar level of control is achieved via an Arduino script communicating with an event-driven application controller running on the host computer. In this way, a Java-based user interface running on a host computer can provide full experimental control. “Ardulink”, a Java facility, implements Arduino-computer communication protocols.

For both types of conditioning, a timing-gated interrupt activates stepper motors via custom software embedded within a microcontroller (Arduino). During operant conditioning, a fish must first approach a proximity sensor at a remote location and then swim to the reward location. For classical conditioning, animals simply associate a sound or light with an unconditioned stimulus, such as a small food reward presented at a fixed location, and swim towards that location to obtain a few grains of food dispensed automatically via a sensor-triggered, stepper motor. A webcam placed below a glass tank records fish-swimming behavior. Within a stimulus-driven conditioning paradigm designed to train zebrafish, we present a localized pulse of light via LEDs and/or sounds via an underwater transducer. Our methodology exploits directed movement towards a target that depends on spatial working memory, including processing of sensory inputs, motivational drive, and attentional mechanisms. Here, we describe a simple apparatus and a flexible, microcontroller-based conditioning paradigm that minimizes human intervention. Current methods for associative conditioning in animals involve human intervention that is labor intensive, stressful to animals, and introduces experimenter bias in the data.

Debut video capture free version limitations