Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory

Jack Shepard, Towson University

Location: Maryland

Context

I am currently teaching an upper-level CURE in Behavioral Neuroscience for the first time. The class size is only 8 students in the first offering, but I expect the course to grow to a maximum of 18 students. The class meets twice per week for 3 hours per session over a 16-week semester. Each class typically begins with instruction of a basic skill (e.g. Keeping a lab notebook, interpreting graphs, etc.) so students can be successful in the course with a basic understanding of biology and a willingness to adapt as experiments don't go as expected.

Target Audience:Major
CURE Duration:A full term

CURE Design

The Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory CURE focuses on understanding complex behavior through a simple model organism. To achieve this, student research teams design experiments that build upon my research program and are customized for each course offering. The specific projects will vary based on our current knowledge of stress and light avoidance in planarians, but all students will develop experience quantifying complex behaviors through video recordings of planarians. These projects employ 3D printed behavioral testing apparatus and readily available electronics to record planarian behavior. The apparatus is designed based on equipment used for measuring rodent anxiety-like behaviors, with the aim of connecting existing experiments with rodents and broadening our understanding of complex behaviors using a simple model organism. This adaptable system allows students to design their own projects while gathering data that advances the field. Students are assessed on their ability to think, perform, and communicate like a scientist modeled on Delventhal and Steinhauer (2020). This is accomplished through a series of small assignments throughout this semester along with a poster presentation and research paper where students communicate their findings. The larger assignments of a poster and paper are scaffolded throughout this semester. In short, students in this course design and conduct experiments in the field of behavioral neuroscience, analyze the data, and present their findings to the scientific community.

Stakeholders are the scientific community and neuroscientists in particular. The students present their work as a research poster at the Towson University Student Research Symposium. If we collect publishable data as part of the course, students are also invited to co-author scientific papers.

Core Competencies: Analyzing and interpreting data, Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering), Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering), Developing and using models, Planning and carrying out investigations
Nature of Research:Basic Research

Tasks that Align Student and Research Goals

Instructional Materials

Here is the Course Syllabus (Acrobat (PDF) 143kB Apr28 23), which includes a weekly schedule and a bit more detail about the learning outcomes for the course.

Assessment

Here is the Poster presentation rubric (Acrobat (PDF) 111kB Apr28 23) I use.

Instructional Staffing

This CURE had an Undergraduate Learning Assistant (ULA). In the first offering, the ULA was an undergraduate working in my lab. This allowed him to step in when a student was absent and provide tips for running experiments efficiently.

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Provenance: Jack Shepard, Towson University
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Author Experience

Jack Shepard, Towson University

Our department faces increasing student demand for research experience that surpasses the capacity of faculty research labs. To address this issue, we are developing and implementing CUREs, which will enable us to better meet the needs of our students. Given the increasing student interest in neuroscience, my goal is to grant access to a greater number of those who seek research opportunities in this field.

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Advice for Implementation

Regarding teaching the CURE, I recommend the following:

• Allow plenty of time for experiments (don't over schedule the course with activities).
• Leave a week as TBD for experiments that run longer than expected.
• Students break things- be ready with backup equipment.
• Allow students to write protocols for their experiments (they will need a lot of editing, but it encourages the student to think through the experiment in advance).
• Review lab procedures as the course progresses to prevent drift from standard procedures.

Regarding equipment and supplies, it may be helpful to know that:

• Planarians can be purchased from Carolina as needed or grown in the lab.
• Behavioral testing equipment can be 3D printed. I will add the .STL files to this entry.
• Video capture can be done with a webcam, smart phone or in my case, a Raspberry Pi NoIR camera with a Raspberry Pi 4B loaded with simple Python Scripts that I am happy to share.

Iteration

This CURE is designed to allow students to investigate factors that alter planarian behavior through potential stressors or pharmacological manipulation of neurotransmission. By keeping a detailed lab notebook and scoring behavioral data as projects progress, students identify problems as they arise. If a planarian wasn't handled properly in the experiment, the students know to replace the animal in the data set. However, an experiment that doesn't support our hypothesis is not a failed experiment. As long as the experiment was conducted properly, we still learn something about planarian behavior from the experiment. The course is structured to allow time for issues that arise during the experiments or if we need to redesign the experiment and use a different approach. The CURE uses iteration in that the projects are direct extensions of what is known about planarian behavior. Subsequent offerings of the course will further extend what was discovered in the literature and previous discoveries made by our students.

Using CURE Data

The data from the CURE projects are shared with the university community through a poster session at Towson University. Since the work is done by research teams, authorship for the poster is in alphabetical order with a note that all authors contributed equally to the work.

Resources

The first two papers are very helpful for designing CUREs. My students and I read and discussed the remaining papers to understand planarian behavior and find gaps in what is known about planarian behavior to design experiments.

References
[1] R. Delventhal, J. Steinhauer, A course-based undergraduate research experience examining neurodegeneration in Drosophila melanogaster teaches students to think, communicate, and perform like scientists, PLoS One. 15 (2020) 1–22. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0230912.
[2] L.C. Auchincloss, S.L. Laursen, J.L. Branchaw, K. Eagan, M. Graham, D.I. Hanauer, et al., Assessment of course-based undergraduate research experiences: Ameeting report, CBE Life Sci. Educ. 13 (2014) 29–40. doi:10.1187/cbe.14-01-0004.
[3] T.R. Paskin, J. Jellies, J. Bacher, W.S. Beane, Planarian phototactic assay reveals differential behavioral responses based on wavelength, PLoS One. 9 (2014) 1–20. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0114708.
[4] O.R. Pagán, Planaria: An animal model that integrates development, regeneration and pharmacology, Int. J. Dev. Biol. 61 (2017) 519–529. doi:10.1387/ijdb.160328op.
[5] H.M. Brown, H. Ito, T.E. Ogden, Spectral Sensitivity of the Planarian Ocellus, J. Gen. Physiol. 51 (1968) 255–260.
[6] B.D. Wisenden, M.C. Millard, Aquatic flatworms use chemical cues from injured conspecifics to assess predation risk and to associate risk with novel cues, Anim. Behav. 62 (2001) 761–766. doi:10.1006/anbe.2001.1797.
[7] A.M. Zewde, F. Yu, S. Nayak, C. Tallarida, A.B. Reitz, L.G. Kirby, et al., PLDT (planarian light/dark test): an invertebrate assay to quantify defensive responding and study anxiety-like effects, J. Neurosci. Methods. 293 (2018) 284–288. doi:10.1016/j.jneumeth.2017.10.010.
[8] M.S. Farrell, K. Gilmore, R.B. Raffa, E.A. Walker, Behavioral characterization of serotonergic activation in the flatworm Planaria, Behav. Pharmacol. 19 (2008) 177–182. doi:10.1097/FBP.0b013e3282fe885e.
[9] P. Fossat, J. Bacqué-Cazenave, P. De Deurwaerdère, J.-P. Delbecque, D. Cattaert, Anxiety-like behavior in crayfish is controlled by serotonin, Science (80-. ). 344 (2014) 1293 LP – 1297. doi:10.1126/science.1248811.
[10] A.M. Collins, G.W. Gerald, Attraction of Flatworms at Various Hunger Levels Toward Cues from an Odonate Predator, (2005).
[11] M. Cho, S.U. Nayak, T. Jennings, C.S. Tallarida, S.M. Rawls, Predator odor produces anxiety-like behavioral phenotype in planarians that is counteracted by fluoxetine, Physiol. Behav. 206 (2019) 181–184. doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2019.04.003.