I’m a good Bacteria!

Objectives Ice breaker Who am I ? Introduce the topic Brief methods Data analysis Over to you! Questions at the end

Who is listening?

Who am I? Sum!

Why am I here?

Introduction to the topic

Background

Aims To assess whether probiotic supplements can alter the behaviour of rats when given an object novelty task

Methods mins or 1 hour delay Sample phase Test phase Experimental set up

A brief video showing the test phase

Data at a 5 minute delay Rat number Control novel object contact time (s) Control familiar object contact time (s) Rat number Probiotic novel object contact time (s) Probiotic familiar object contact time (s)

Data at a 1 hour delay Rat number Control novel object contact time (s) Control familiar object contact time (s) Rat number Probiotic novel object contact time (s) Probiotic familiar object contact time (s)

Hypothesis (What do I expect?)

The task The data presented represents one of the experiments I did which looked at testing a rat’s ability to tell a novel object from a familiar one. The more time a rat spends with a novel object, the better it is! With this in mind, I want you to plot my data (all on the same graph) and show me whether the control group or the probiotic group is better at this task. Think also about how you present the data (i.e. do you need to plot every point or is there a better way of showing the trends?) I also want you to tell me what the mean values for the two different groups are and what the effect of putting a longer delay is. Please also calculate the standard deviation and standard error of the mean for each group.

Over to you…what did you find?

Some YouTube clips

References Good, M. A., Barnes, P., Staal, V., McGregor, A. and Honey, R. C. (2007). Context- but not familiarity-dependent forms of object recognition are impaired following excitotoxic hippocampal lesions in rats. Behavioral Neuroscience 121: Good, M. A. and Hale, G. (2007). The "Swedish" Mutation of the Amyloid Precursor Protein (APPswe) Dissociates Components of Object-Location Memory in Aged Tg2576 Mice. Behavioral Neuroscience 121: Hohmann, C. F., Walker, E. M., Boylan, C. B. and Blue, M. E. (2007). Neonatal serotonin depletion alters behavioural responses to spatial change and novelty. Brain Research 1139: Barker, G. R. I., Bird, F., Alexander, V. and Warburton, E. C. (2007). Recognition memory for objects, place, and temporal order: A disconnection analysis of the role of the medial prefrontal cortex and perirhinal cortex. Journal of Neuroscience 27: Desbonnet, L., Garrett, L., Clarke, G., Bienenstock, J., and Dinan, T. G. (2008). The probiotic Bifidobacteria infantis: An assessment of potential antidepressant properties in the rat. Journal of Psychiatric Research 43: