Description:
Reference #: 01562
The University of South Carolina is offering licensing opportunities for Sleep Disturbance Chamber for Rodents
Background:
As experimenters, if we are gentle handling, it is often difficult to accurately sleep deprive more than 2 animals at one time given that towards the latter end of the protocol, hours 5-6, animals are quite tired and difficult to keep awake. An automated system would alleviate these discrepancies and also allow us to sleep deprive multiple animals at the same time, provided we have multiple chambers.
Invention Description:
This invention can be used by neuroscientists to prevent small animals, such as rats and mice, from initiating into sleep.
Potential Applications:
For use to sleep restrict and sleep deprive small animals and test hypotheses related to the role of sleep.
Advantages and Benefits:
The chambers are designed to work with a sleep monitoring system that many basic neuroscientists use (DSI telemetric EEG/EMG system). The chambers can also be programmed to work simultaneously and increase throughput. Currently, the best options on the market work as stand-alone models. Our model will therefore increase efficiency, improve accuracy, and increase productivity. In addition, this technology can easily incorporate Artificial Intelligence routines to autonomously operate without the need for human intervention.