Fear Conditioning System

Background

• Our system automates the two most common fear conditioning paradigms in mice or rats using Pavlovian associative learning experiments: Cued and Contextual Fear Conditioning. It works as follows:
  • Cued Fear Conditioning: Single-frequency sounds are delivered as a neutral or conditioned stimulus (CS). The electric current from the grid floor is delivered as the aversive, or unconditioned stimulus (US). 
  • Contextual Fear Conditioning: The visual appearance of the cage serves as the conditioned stimulus (CS). The context kit includes a set of colored floors and patterned walls. The animal associates the electric shock to the environment (context) in which it was received.
  • Fear Conditioning (FC) is learned rapidly (usually only one trial) producing a stable and long-lasting behavioral change. This is useful for drug discovery, neurobehavioral, pharmacological and genetic studies.

 Easy control, easy set up, easy expansion

• Automatically detects the freezing response (Conditional Response), even in total darkness. Reporting information includes total freezing time, number and duration of freezing episodes, latency times between stimuli and freezing. 
• ANY-maze (the brain of our FC-system) controls the experimental settings, including light, sound (in the range 100Hz-18KHz; 55-100dB or white noise), and shock (constant current pre-settable from 0.1 to 3.0mA in 0.1mA steps). To facilitate easy set up, ANY-maze will set up protocol items for you. Simply select the mode in the Protocol list named ‘Ugo Basile Fear Conditioning mode’ and answer the questions about your cage set up.
• A typical Fear Conditioning (FC) System consists of:
  • FC-Unit – includes a Sound-Attenuating chamber, with noiseless ventilating fan, a dual (visible and I.R.) light, a loudspeaker and an USB-camera. Each FC-Unit has an individual controller on-board. Wide-angle lenses and IR filters are included.
  • FC-Cage – for mouse or rat, with electrified floor and context kit (3 striped, 3 checkered, 3 grey walls and 3 plastic floors (white, black, grey). See ordering information for the range of available cages.
  • ANY-maze video tracking software (special FC version available) 
  • Extremely simple to set-up: just plug a USB cable into a single USB port on the FC-Unit.
• Optional models for tethered animals are available.
• Expand your system easily. Each FC-Unit is individually connected to ANY-maze, with virtually no limit in number.
• Upgrade path available if you own a previous version of our FC-System. Ask for details!