In the Lab

So here's what I have actually been doing all summer: Cognitive Neuroscience!! The first week was boring as hell, but its gotten better since. I worked with rats everyday until monday (they died for science). We did a maternal deprivation study, where we filmed the pups and dam (mother rat) interaction and maternal behavior following periods of pup/dam isolations. I filmed, defined behavior, scored the behavior on a computer, interpreted, graphed, found significance... for all the mother and 8 pups. Then we did some odor habituation tests on the pups over the next couple days. Odor habituation is learning. We compared the maternal deprivation, sham, and HI (brain damaged) data and found significance. Yay!! That's basically what I have been up to this summer.