Registration Details
Contents
- BNA2023 Session
- Recordings of recent relevant webinars
- Other relevant resources
- Further neuroscience resources
The Festival of Neuroscience is the annual meeting of the British Neuroscience Association. This year’s meeting will be held in Brighton, 23 – 26 April, and registration is open.
We will be hosting a session on “Refining the use of head fixation and food & water control in rodents”, including talks on an NC3Rs’ working group focussed on these topics, coverage of refining these procedures, and the importance of habitation to any procedure involving rodents.
Refining the use of head fixation and food & water control in rodents
Monday 24 April, 09.30 – 11.10
The use of both head fixation and water control is widening across the neurosciences, having been used extensively in sensory studies for some time. At the behest of the research community, the NC3Rs formed a working group to consider possible refinements and best practice advice that could be made regarding the use of both of these techniques without compromising scientific aims. We can now share these recommendations, which are the product of an extensive review of the literature, an international survey, and the experiences of the experts from the working group and others.
This session features speakers from the working group and others to highlight the recommendations made as well as give practical advice on the use of head fixation and water control in mice. This will be illustrated with data, demonstrating that refinements to these procedures can result in better welfare outcomes for the animals used as well as better scientific outcomes.
- Chris Barkus, NC3Rs, UK: NC3Rs working group on high-yield rodent behavioural experiments (co-chair).
- Malamati Bitzidou, The Francis Crick Institute, UK: The head fixation surgery and procedure (co-chair).
- Adil Khan, King's College London, UK: Food restriction for optimizing high-yield behavioural assays.
- Emma Robinson, University of Bristol, UK: Habituation methods to improve scientific outcomes and benefit animal welfare.
This session will be of interest to anyone involved in the use of these procedures or care for the animals involved, or those that might soon take this up, including:
- Researchers.
- Animal technologists and care staff.
- Veterinarians.
- Members of AWERBs.
Recordings of recent relevant webinars
- Including both sexes in your experiments is increasingly being expected by regulators, funders and publishers. This joint webinar from the NC3Rs and the MRC explores how to address common challenges wand gives practical advice for including both sexes in experimental design and analysis and husbandry.
- Food restriction is widely used in the field of neuroscience to motivate performance in behavioural tasks that involve a food reward. This NC3Rs webinar addresses the scientific and welfare implications of using food restriction with rodents.
Other relevant resources
- A high level introduction to best practice in mouse colony management. Topics include confirming, archiving and maintaining mouse strains, as well as important considerations for breeding strategies.
- Techniques for blood sampling in laboratory animal species to ensure the most appropriate technique is chosen.
- Research has shown that picking up mice by the tail induces aversion and high anxiety levels, as assessed by a range of measures, which can be minimised by instead using a tunnel or cupped hands. We have a range of resources designed to support the implementation of these refined, non-aversive mouse handling methods.
- Learn more about why the single-use of needles should be standard practice and how to implement this in your facility.
Further neuroscience resources
- Refining food and fluid control in macaques
Guidelines on the use of food and fluid control in behavioural neuroscience experiments with macaque monkeys which have refined the procedures used in laboratories nationally and internationally. - Magnetic resonance imaging
We have documented the ways in which magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is contributing to the 3Rs in neuroscience studies involving non-human primates.