{"id":142,"date":"2010-06-30T00:15:18","date_gmt":"2010-06-30T00:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/?p=142"},"modified":"2010-06-30T00:15:18","modified_gmt":"2010-06-30T00:15:18","slug":"lickometer-circuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/30\/lickometer-circuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Lickometer circuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Lickometers detect when an animal, usually a rodent, licks a water port. They’re useful in all sorts of behavioral tasks, ranging from addiction experiments (spike the water and see how much they consume), to psychophysics experiments (e.g., GO-NOGO type paradigms). Basically, there is a metal spout that gets licked while the animal stands on a metal floor, and then the animal’s body completes a circuit. The electrical signal gets converted to a TTL pulse which is measured using standard data acquisition devices. These devices are available commercially (e.g., Med Associates<\/a>), but I recently tested an elegant circuit that you can use to build your own.
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\nBurton Slotnick of the University of South Florida reported this circuit in a 2009 paper<\/a>. It has several nice features:<\/p>\n

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  1. Simple. Very few components.<\/li>\n
  2. Battery-powered. No line noise, portable, fewer wires, safer.<\/li>\n
  3. Flexible. The circuit can be easily modified to accommodate animals of different sizes by changing the resistors.<\/li>\n
  4. Directly outputs TTL-compatible pulses. No conversion necessary.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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    It can be useful to have a photobeam in the device as well. The animal signals it is ready for stimuli by getting into position: approaching the lick port and breaking the photobeam, without licking. This is even simpler to implement since there are many slotted photoswitches available. For example, Omron has a nice range<\/a> of slot-type photoswitches– some even include protective circuitry for easy implementation.<\/p>\n

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    <\/a><\/p>\n

    Lickometers detect when an animal, usually a rodent, licks a water port. They’re useful in all sorts of behavioral tasks, ranging from addiction experiments (spike the water and see how much they consume),…<\/p>\n

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