Guide/Animal Handling

Workflow

Prerequisites — complete these first:

Guide/Surgery and baseplating* Guide/Getting started with miniscopes

Next steps — these build on this guide:

(none — this is an end node)

We typically wait at least a day after base plate surgery to begin handling. We recommend that mice become well acclimated to the experimenters prior to mounting miniscopes on awake moving mice. It is important that the mice feel comfortable with the experimenters as stress during the mounting of the miniscope during the experiment can cause adverse effects for the mice and thus, experiment. After gently handling the animals a few times, acclimate the mice to getting something placed on and off their heads by gently taking the protective caps on and off their base plate (that is cemented on the mice's heads). The experimenters should be able to quickly remove the cap without much struggle from the animal before continuing onto the habituation phase.