An automated psychoacoustic testing apparatus for use in cats

YB Benovitski; PJ Blamey; GD Rathbone; JB Fallon

Journal article

An automated psychoacoustic testing apparatus for use in cats

YB Benovitski, PJ Blamey, GD Rathbone, JB Fallon

Hearing Research | ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV | Published : 2014

DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2013.11.002

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Abstract

Animal behavioral studies make a significant contribution to hearing research and provide vital information which is not available from human subjects. Animal psychoacoustics is usually extremely time consuming and labor intensive; in addition, animals may become stressed, especially if restraints or negative reinforcers such as electric shocks are used. We present a novel behavioral experimental system that was developed to allow efficient animal training in response to acoustic stimuli. Cats were required to perform a relatively simple task of moving toward and away from the device depending on whether the members of a tone pair were different or the same in frequency (go/no-go task). The ..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

James Fallon Author

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Awarded by National Institutes of Health

Funding Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health (HHS-N-263-2007-00053-C), the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and The Department of Electronic Engineering, La-Trobe University. The Bionics Institute acknowledges the support it receives from the Victorian Government through its Operational Infrastructure Support Program. The authors are grateful to Alison Neil, Nicole Critch and Amy Morley for technical assistance; Andrew Wise and Sam Irvine for advice; Sue Pierce for veterinary advice; Sue Mckay for animal maintenance; Dexter Irvine for comments on the earlier versions of the manuscript.