Animal Displacement Test
Objective: Test whether head-direction cell firing depends on active movement versus passive displacement by hand-holding and moving animals around the cylinder
This is a Animal Displacement Test protocol using rat as the model organism. The procedure involves 3 procedural steps, 2 equipment items, 1 materials. Extracted from a 1990 paper published in Journal of Neuroscience.
Model and subjects
rat • not specified • not specified • not specified • not specified • 9
Study window
Estimated timing pending
Core workflow
Establish baseline recording in fixed cylinder • Hand-hold and passively displace animals • Record cell responses during passive displacement
Primary readouts
- Preferred firing direction of head-direction cells
- Firing range of head-direction cells
- Maximal firing rate during passive displacement
- Peak firing rate
Key equipment and reagents
Use this page as an execution guide, then fall back to the source paper whenever you need exact exclusions, dosing details, or assay-specific caveats.
Confirm first
- Verify the animal model, intervention setup, and collection timepoints against the source paper.
- Check that every direct vendor link matches the exact specification your lab plans to run.
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- Work through the protocol steps in order and use the inline vendor chips only when you need to source or verify an item.
- Jump to Experimental Context for readouts, data shape, and analysis flow before planning downstream analysis.
Protocol Steps
Start here. The step list is optimized for running the experiment, with direct vendor links available inline when you need to source a cited item.
Establish baseline recording in fixed cylinder
Record head-direction cell firing from rats moving freely in the 76-cm-diameter gray cylinder with white card cue present
Note: White card occupies 100 degrees of arc and serves as major orienting spatial cue
View evidence from paper
“Head-direction cells were recorded from rats as they moved freely in a 76-cm-diameter gray cylinder. A white card, occupying 100 degrees of arc, was taped to the inside wall”
Hand-hold and passively displace animals
Hand hold the animals and move them around the cylinder while recording head-direction cell activity
Note: This tests whether firing depends on active movement versus passive displacement
View evidence from paper
“Hand holding the animals and moving them around the cylinder had no effect on the preferred direction or firing range of the cell”
Record cell responses during passive displacement
Monitor and record the preferred firing direction, firing range, and maximal firing rate during passive hand-holding displacement
Note: Compare responses to baseline active movement condition
View evidence from paper
“Hand holding the animals and moving them around the cylinder had no effect on the preferred direction or firing range of the cell, but decreased the maximal firing rate in 7/9 cells”