(BFNL) As one of the three Stanford Neuroscience Cores, the Stanford Behavioral and Functional Neuroscience Laboratory (BFNL). This core facility provides a centralized resource for standard and automated sensorimotor, learning and memory, and social behavioral paradigms as well as expertise in rodent models of CNS disorders in conjunction to pharmacological and experimental drug testing. In addition, automated behavior testing paradigms established by this core have helped our community to further address the standardization and reproducibility of behavioral tests using state-of-the-art apparatuses such as Intellicage and PhenoLab automated home environment monitoring systems. These systems provide complete home- cage sensorimotor behavioral monitoring capabilities and can test simple and complex learning and memory tasks in a fully automated fashion with minimal human intervention. Using this expertise and technology BFNL has provided state-of-the-art phenotyping services for novel transgenic lines and provided validated CNS Disease Models for testing novel compounds and neuropharmacological exploration during the past several years. BFNL has freely shared experimental protocols and data. The detailed list of behavioral paradigms, standard operating procedures, protocols, and a sample data set for most behavioral paradigm has been shared publicly at http://sbfnl.stanford.edu/testingtable. Over the past four years, BFNL has supported 55 labs and faculty with almost 40,000 hours of services. This effort has led to more than 20 publications overall. Going forward BFNL will continue providing these services and allocate additional resources to address more actively some of the rising concerns in the field about the predictive value and inherent limitations of animal models in drug discovery and also innovate and expand upon its automated testing capabilities. All of these advances will be shared with the neuroscience community via our newly improved resource sharing websites.
(BFNL) The essential function of the Stanford Behavioral and Functional Neuroscience Laboratory (BFNL) is to provide a shared resource platform for academic labs, providing access to rodent behavior testing in existing and novel paradigms for characterizing behavior. This core facility provides a centralized resource for standard and automated sensorimotor, learning and memory, and social behavioral paradigms as well as expertise in rodent models of CNS disorders in conjunction to pharmacological and experimental drug testing.
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