Moving Week!
June 10, 2013 - Monday
June 6, 2013 - Thursday
Prep for Friday's Presentation! Excitation / Inhibition is determined by the neurotransmitter, which will either create a positive or negative reaction (positive = excitation, negative = inhibition). During excitation, a decrease in current and an increase in voltage will depolarize the neuronal cell.
June 5, 2013 - Thursday
June 4, 2013 - Wednesday
June 3, 2013 - Monday
June 2, 2013 - Sunday
We found with bird 1153 that it's behavior changed when it understood it's punishment. As shown by the left chart, the bird's percentage of accurate responses increased with every trial.
The x axis represents block number (or group of trial responses by 50's; there are no half-integer block numbers, Matlab adds them automatically), the y axis represents percentage of accurate responses (in percent of 100).
May 31st, 2013 - Friday
May 30th, 2013 - Thursday
May 29th, 2013 - Wednesday
May 28th, 2013 - Tuesday
Curious what a Hopper looks like? The top left is the bird's perspective from inside the cage, of what the hopper (food dispenser) looks like when it's "down." Bottom right is the bird's perspective when the hopper is "up." Top left is a side-view of the hopper. The box in front of the wall is the dispense bowl, the black box is where the food is stored - it's also the part of the hopper that lifts and drops. Bottom left is the view of the peck ports in relationship to the food dispense bowl.
May 28, 2013 ~
The birds are so fast! - Each of the bird is labeled with one or two tags (or, in special cases, three). The tag is used to identify each individual bird by a number. My job today was to catch each bird, and check whether it was in the right cage (or even if it was listed at all). After writing down the numbers of the birds, or crossing off birds who were in the right cage, I edited a doc with each of the four cages (and the birds in that cage) and their birds listed on it. I labeled birds as "found" or "not found" and moved birds' numbers who were listed in the wrong cage. - It's so much fun to work with the animals!
May 27th, 2013 - Monday
May 27, 2013 ~ Here's a photo of the computer that runs all of the programming for the 16 bird cages - including hoppers (for food), lights, audio, the LED's for the birds to peck, everything. On the top box (black) we switch between screens to view from the cameras inside the birds' boxes. The two boxes below that (off-white) show and control the lights, LEDs for pecking, and the hoppers. They show the input coming from the bird and the output coming from the computer.
May 24th, 2013 - Friday
May 24, 2013 ~ This is just one of 16 bird cages in the Gentner lab. Each cage has one bird with a system for monitoring their response behavior (food and water as well, of course). The birds who are already shaped are trained to respond to certain stimuli by pecking their beak in the holes of the monitor. If the bird pecks in the correct tube (it knows which tube either by the song that's played or by the LED lamp lit up inside the tube), the bowl of food called a "hopper" is lifted so it can eat.
Here's a look at my workspace. Most of the day I'm in the recording room, or in the cage room where all the birds are kept, but this is the space where I prep for presentations, update my (ever-constant) emails, and do any other computer work. When working on a computer, I generally use my laptop for storage of files, including photos, but I use the dual-screen desktop computer for my work. Over the course of this internship, my notebook and my coffee canteen have become my best friends!