Source Paper
Dopamine Operates as a Subsecond Modulator of Food Seeking
Mitchell F. Roitman, Garret D. Stuber, Paul E. M. Phillips, R. Mark Wightman, Regina M. Carelli
Journal of Neuroscience • 2004
Lever Press for Sucrose Task
Objective: To determine the temporal relationship between dopamine signaling in the nucleus accumbens and food-seeking behavior by measuring dopamine release during lever pressing for sucrose reward
This is a Lever Press for Sucrose Task protocol using rat as the model organism. The procedure involves 4 procedural steps, 3 equipment items, 1 materials. Extracted from a 2004 paper published in Journal of Neuroscience.
Model and subjects
rat • Not specified • unknown • Not specified • Not specified
Study window
Estimated timing pending
Core workflow
Rat training on lever press task • Cue presentation to trained rats • Cue presentation to naive rats
Primary readouts
- Dopamine concentration changes (measured in nanomolar units)
- Latency of dopamine release onset (0.2 ± 0.1 sec)
- Peak dopamine amplitude (67 ± 20 nM)
- Temporal relationship between dopamine surges and lever press behavior
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.
Use the page like this
- 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.
Rat training on lever press task
Rats were trained to press a lever to obtain sucrose reward
Note: Training period duration not provided in text
View evidence from paper
“rats trained to press a lever for sucrose”
Cue presentation to trained rats
Cues signaling opportunity to respond for sucrose were presented to rats trained with cue-sucrose pairing
Note: Cues evoked dopamine release in trained rats but not in naive rats
View evidence from paper
“Cues that signal the opportunity to respond for sucrose evoked dopamine release”
Cue presentation to naive rats
Same cues were presented to rats naive to the cue-sucrose pairing as control
Note: Naive rats did not show dopamine signals to cues
View evidence from paper
“When the same cues were presented to rats naive to the cue-sucrose pairing, similar dopamine signals were not observed”
Dopamine measurement during lever pressing
Dopamine was sampled every 100 milliseconds using fast-scan cyclic voltammetry at carbon-fiber microelectrodes in nucleus accumbens during lever pressing and sucrose consumption
Note: Measurements captured subsecond temporal dynamics of dopamine signaling
View evidence from paper
“sampled dopamine every 100 msec using fast-scan cyclic voltammetry at carbon-fiber microelectrodes in the nucleus accumbens”