Psychostimulant actions on rodent behaviours
An Undergraduate Laboratory Exercise Examining the Psychomotor Stimulant Effects of Caffeine in Laboratory Rats is a journal article describing a laboratory session in which students investigate the effects of psychostimulants on motor activity in rodents.
This article describes husbandry and care of the rodents, the experimental equipment and resources required, student protocols and data analysis. Students gain experience of experimental design, animal handling, observation and scoring of rodent behaviours using ethograms, data analysis and interpretation.
It was developed by Dr’s Pham & Romeo, Barnard College, NY, USA and is published in the Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education (2012) 10 (2): A132-A139. Copyright is retained by the journal.
This laboratory session can be used in undergraduate student education as part of a larger in-vivo neurobiology or pharmacology course.