Ardbark

Traditional auditory stimuli used in behavioral tasks a pure tones over a range frequencies. These stimuli have proven reliable for eliciting conditioned behavioral responses in rewarding contexts and fearful contexts. Many commercially available operant chambers have devices available for producing tones that integrate easily with their control hardware and software. However, these devices are often not capable of producing naturalistic auditory stimuli, which may be especially useful for fear conditioning studies. To address this, Benjamin Berg developed the Ardbark, an Arduino based device for producing naturalistic stimuli which can be integrated easily with existing commercial operant chambers with a few modifications. The device that stores custom-made .wav files on a SD card, interfaces with the Med System, and plays the .wav files through ceiling mounted speakers. Detailed build instructions and files are available on the McDannald Lab website. 

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_021494