Kacy Henwood: Addiction and Neuroscience, Week Four

This week was very exciting at the lab! Megan and I started to train a new set of rats. We are training the rats to press the lever in the alcohol boxes. The training starts off with only one lever out. On Monday, to start the training, we put the rats in the alcohol boxes overnight. Instead of alcohol for the overnight session, we used water because that way the rats learn that pressing the lever will lead to a reward.  It took two days to run overnight for all rats because there are only twenty-four alcohol boxes. On Wednesday, we put the rats in the boxes for two hours. This time we put ten-percent ethanol to get the rats used to the taste of alcohol. Next week, we will get the rats to usual thirty minute testing sessions. By the end of the internship, the rats should close to their baseline alcohol presses.

On Tuesday morning, I was lucky enough to watch two surgeries. The first surgery I watched was a perfusion. A perfusion is when formaldehyde is pumped throughout the body to preserve all the body’s tissue. After we do this, we are able to slice and stain the brain. The other surgery I watched was inserting a rat catheter. The catheter goes into the jugular vein and sticks out of the rat’s back. Molly was able to do

this surgery and by Wednesday she had put in two catheters. The first step in this surgery is to put the rat under anesthesia and shave it. You have to shave both the neck and back. After shaving the rat, Molly carefully inserts the catheter into the vein. This is the hardest part of the surgery. One wrong move and the rat could possibly bleed out. Molly has done thousands of catheter surgeries and has plenty of experience so all twelve rats have recovered very nicely.

I have learned so much this week about running experiments. I am beyond excited to keep working at Scripps for the next two weeks!