Experiment/beacher 2025 rat nucleus accumbens
From Miniscope
Rat nucleus accumbens core imaging in Drd1 and Drd2 Cre lines
Deep ventral striatal imaging in transgenic rats during operant food self-administration, published as a step-by-step protocol.
Extracted from full textTranscribed by a curator from the published methods section. Values not stated in the paper are marked as not reported rather than inferred.
Animal
Species
Rat
Transgenic line
Drd1-iCre (LE-Tg(Drd1a-iCre)3Ottc; RRRC:768), Drd2-iCre (LE-Tg(Drd2-iCre)1Ottc; RRRC:767)
Sex
Both
Age at surgery
3 months or older, 250-350 g
Target
Brain region
Coordinates
AP +1.6, ML +1.6 from bregma (Paxinos & Watson 2007); DV -6.6 (females) / -6.7 (males)
Hemisphere
Not reported
Cell type
D1 receptor-expressing MSNs, D2 receptor-expressing MSNs
Indicator
Indicator
jGCaMP8m
Reports
Calcium
Delivery
AAV + transgenic
Construct
AAV-FLEX-jGCaMP8m
Titer
4.89 x 10^12 particles/mL
Injection volume
1750 nL
Expression time
~4 weeks
Optical access
Method
GRIN lens
Lens
GRINtech NEM-100-25-10-860-S-1.0p
Implant depth
DV -6.6 mm (females), -6.7 mm (males)
Surgery staging
Single surgery
Implant to baseplating
At least 3 weeks recovery; baseplate at ~4 weeks
Imaging
Condition
Freely behaving
Sessions
Eight sessions three days apart, thirty 80-second trials each
Behavior
Operant food self-administration on a fixed-ratio schedule
Analysis
CaImAn, custom Fourier-based motion correction
Cell yield
62.52 +/- 13.72 active neurons per trial in awake recordings
What was hard about this preparation
The protocol explicitly flags: damage from blunt-tip injection needles; bleeding under the lens; dental cement that is sensitive to ambient humidity and temperature; the need to protect the GRIN lens between sessions; miniscope-to-cable pairing incompatibilities; and cable strain causing disconnection mid-session. Careful calibration before surgery is called out as critical.
Who to ask
Experimenter
Nicholas J. Beacher
Institution
National Institute on Drug Abuse
Notes
Implant depth differs by sex (-6.6 mm females, -6.7 mm males) — one of the few entries where the protocol adjusts coordinates for sex. Published as a Current Protocols article, so it is unusually explicit about failure modes.