Lickometer Position

kleaman

Hello,

My lab is using the optical lickometer from Sanworks and starting to try behavioral training with our mice. We are having trouble finding an optimal position to place the lickometer where the mouse can reach to lick the spout but it does not break the beam with its nose. It seems that in most positions, the lickometer is either too far away for the mouse to lick or close enough that the mouse's nose is causing lick detection even without licking. Is there an optimal location or angle to position the lickometer to avoid this problem? Also, when the animal does lick, we often do not see this lick detected, and I am wondering if that is also a location issue.

Josh

Hello Kyoko,

Typically the lickometer is mounted horizontally, or at a slight upward angle as shown on the product page. Positioning with respect to the mouse depends on the mouse's age and strain. For an adult Black6, if my memory serves, the steel drink tube should be about 2mm below the animal's mouth in the Z axis, and about 3-5mm in front of the mouth. Positioning will take some trial and error, but once you find something that works it should be easy to replicate across your assays.

The detection issue you're seeing could be a positioning issue, but it could also be a hardware issue. If you fold and twist the corner of a wet kimwipe into a profile roughly the dimensions of a mouse tongue, you should be able to break the beam manually and get reliable detection. If that fails, I'd take a closer look at the hardware setup. In an earlier thread you had asked about setting up a custom detection circuit for the lickometer with an NI board. If you share your circuit diagram and a photo of the setup, I may have more insight into the issue.

Thanks,
Josh