Connecting equipment

ANY-maze interfaces

The ANY-maze interfaces are specifically designed to connect ANY-maze to a broad range of equipment typically used in behavioural tests.

There are currently eight devices in the range, including one specifically designed to control opto-genetic lasers and another designed to interface to the 28 volt signals used by Med Associates’ popular operant conditioning chambers.

Sensing things

ANY-maze supports a wide range of inputs which can be used to:

• Detect lever presses, switch closures, nose-pokes, photo-beam breaks, rears, etc.
• Read data from ECG monitors, blood pressure sensors, gas analysers, temperature-, light-, weight- and humidity-sensors, etc.
• Record data from running wheels, including direction, speed, distance run, etc.

Control devices

ANY-maze can also control output devices such as:

• Lights, motors (perhaps to open and close doors), fans, etc.
• Optogenetic lasers – including control of frequency, duty cycle and intensity
• Pellet dispensers, liquid dippers, etc.
• Shockers – including control of shock intensity
• Speakers – to play cue tones, white noise or any sound file
• Syringe pumps – including control of direction, flow rate and volume

Putting it all together

ANY-maze procedures provide a simple but powerful way to control what’s happening during a test.

Using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, you can build procedures to detect when particular situations occur and to take some action because of them.

This might be, for example, that if the animal presses a lever when a light is on then it should be rewarded with a pellet, otherwise a foot shock should be administered – as shown on the right.

Input/Output only mode

In many operant conditioning experiments there’s no need to track the animal’s movements within the apparatus, as the only relevant interactions are through input devices, such a levers or nose-poke holes.

ANY-maze fully supports this type of experiment and we even supply a purpose built interface, which allows ANY-maze to easily control a range of popular operant conditioning equipment. We also offer a low cost I/O only licence, if this is all you want to do with the system.