Some lab news

So I had to sacrifice two rats yesterday. One was my rat with the assymetrical head, who is not participating in the study for his deformities. The other is a rat we have come to call Mr. Crazy, so now you know why he is not participating in the study. They are in rat heaven now.

Daniele wants to do another experiment that combines the paradigms of self-administration and conditioned place preference. He still has to build the cages, but we might be doing surgery on another 20 rats later this week when we get the stereotaxy equipment back. I'm not sure if he is joking when he says I'm going to do at least a few on my own.

The current experiment with the self-administration is going very well. We all work as a team, as me and another person (usually Michele) go in the morning to the rat room and connect the catheter on the heads of the home group to the spring. This allows them to get used to the sensation of being connected to the spring. Four hours later the experiment begins after we connect the novel group to the springs and put them in the experiment chambers. Right now, the rats are in the "training" phase as they learn to associate bar press for drug. Today is the last day of training, and they will have two "wash-out" days to disassociate the alternation of heroin and amphetamine. Then the choice experiments will begin, where they get to choose between the two drugs.

In other news, I got to hang out with Adriana last night while she was between trips. We went to a Spanish/Latin-America place wayyyyyy south of the city. It was kind of a hassle to get back, and actually it was a lot of hassle to get there too since the metro closed on us. It was a ton of fun since our friends knew how to salsa (or merengue?) and were good teachers. Sadly Adriana leaves for Vienna this morning and I don't know if I will get to see her on Sunday before she leaves for Romania. It's hard to believe it's almost been a month since she's been here!!! That means I've been here for seven weeks!!!! I am very very opposed to going home right now. There is just so much to see...