In collaboration with the lab of Dr. Jason Snyder, we have taken on a neurogenesis project to investigate the tole of experience specific tuning in postnatally-born hippocampal neurons

These postnatally born neurons are thought to become attuned to specific features present in the environment, enhancing adulthood learning in the environmental sculpting hypothesis.

We will be testing this hypothesis by exposing ice in neurogenesis to sculpting through visual cues, and then silencing theses new neurons at specific stages of development.

For this project we have designed a custom exposure cage which will house our mice for 5 week, spanning a critical neurogenesis development period. The juvenile exposure stimulus cage was designed with 6 LCD screens with 6 screen-controller units connected in series. Any number of screens can be added and the estimated cost for our design is around $200. the design and associated code will be made open-source.