Force Lickometer

This system includes an 8 oz (236.6 mL) bottle and Lixit® valve to eliminate leakage at the sipper tube. It may be used with direct sipper tube aversive stimulation or scrambled foot aversive stimulation. Oversized reservoirs may be used with this unit for long term studies without any change in performance. Force lickometry offers a completely different way to monitor licking behavior that defines responses better than contact or photobeam lickometers by adding a second dependent variable, force or motivation. This system consists of a precision force transducer and transducer amplifier that combined with an infrared head entry detector, further defines the lick response. An adjustable threshold control determines when a lick count response signal is issued. The head entry detector and lick response output may be connected to any 28 V DC input.

The analog signal generated by the force transducer amplifier may be connected to any analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to record lick force in addition to the lick count. MED Associates offers a version of its Threshold Activity software that has been modified for this particular application. This software must be run on a second computer with ADC and standalone interface card. The behavioral control computer running MED-PC® is used to signal the threshold computer when a bout has begun (defined by the head entry detector and/or first lick). Two threshold levels are user-defined and the force lickometer signal is processed for counts and time above each threshold as well as the sum of the points above threshold (area under the curve/force). The range of force is 0 to 50 grams. The data for each bout is stored in an ASCII file. This unit requires an SG-506 power supply. 


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