Our lab is embedded in the recently refurbished Behavioural Neuroscience Unit (BNU), housed within the Biomedical Sciences Building, at the University of Oxford.  The core lab has facilities for performing fast-scan cyclic voltammetery in behaving rats or mice, fibre photometry, tissue oxygen amperometry, targeted lesionsneuropharmacological manipulations, and electrophysiology, and we are now working in addition with optogenetics and chemogenetics.  In particular, we are keen to use combinations of techniques in order to probe communication between brain regions and causal interactions within large-scale networks.  We also have close links with the dedicated facilities for non-human primate behaviour and fMRI, situated on the floor below the BNU. 

The BNU as a whole consists of 30 testing, surgery and writing rooms, including a dedicated surgery suite with state-of-the-art Zeiss surgical microscopes and digital stereotactic frames.  We have access to over 50 operant and conditioning chambers for rats and mice as well as multiple types of mazes, activity cages, and standard tests of anxiety and emotion.  

 

Translational toolkit” to relate fine-grained neurochemistry to macroscale network function / dysfunction in humans (adapted from Gilmour, Gastembide, Marston & Walton, 2015 Curr Opin Behav Sci)