One-Rat Turnstile (ORT)

Jared Armshaw and Grayson Butcher, from April Becker’s Neuroplasticity and Repertoire Recovery Lab at the University of North Texas, recently shared their open-source apparatus with us.

Behavioral testing of rats usually involves removing individual animals from group housing for isolated testing in a laboratory setting. This human interaction can introduce confounding variables into the experimental data.

To address this issue, researchers have attempted to automate behavioral testing. However, existing methods, such as non-animal-specific testing or larger colony caging, often compromise the ability to assess complex individual behaviors.

The One-Rat Turnstile (ORT) is a novel apparatus designed to overcome these challenges. By integrating directly into a larger colony cage, the ORT enables continuous individual monitoring, training, and testing of rats without removing them from their social environment. This system utilizes RFID technology to track individual animals, minimizing human intervention and providing precise behavioral data. Detailed construction plans for the ORT can be found in the March 2024 Jove paper about the project.

The ORT offers several key advantages: it significantly reduces experimenter time by automating data collection, training, and testing processes. Moreover, by preserving the social dynamics of group housing and limiting human interaction, the ORT produces more reliable and ecologically valid behavioral data.

This research tool was created by your colleagues. Please acknowledge the Principal Investigator, cite the article in which the tool was described, and include an RRID in the Materials and Methods of your future publications. RRID: SCR_025570

Special thanks to Abby St. Jean, a neuroscience undergraduate at American University, for providing this project summary.