Items required in a notebook: * Animal information * Enucleation/vitrectomy information * Experiment information: -experiment name -recording system used (i.e. RRS-61 or RRS-512), rig used (i.e. A or B) -array used -if eccentricity information is going to be taken, note location of piece according to pin# -isolated vs. RPE -dissection information for the piece -stimulus information -relevant information pertaining to events during and inbetween recordings -array corners * Notes for follow-up or general experiment information Animal Information This should include information about the type of animal used, weight, drugs, dark adapted or not, etc. Example for guinea pig experiment: Female multi-colored guinea pig #293, 788g Xylazine 0.25 ml/100g = 1.97cc Ketamine 0.05 ml/100g = 0.394 cc Non-dark adapted guinea pig. For the monkey experiments we don't get quite the same information, so here is an example of good animal information: Acute procedure, Callaway lab, Male, Macaca Radiata (Bonnet Macaque), Tristin B3.8.10.5, DOB 2001-01-08,Wt 4.0 kg. * For the monkeys we should have as much information as possible, but it's sometimes difficult to get this information from the participating lab if not requested prior to enucleation. At the bare minimum we should have information about whether it is acute or chronic in the notebook. Basically, any additionally relevant information about drugs, breathing rate we are given should be noted. Enucleation/vitrectomy information Give a brief synopsis of enucleation and vitrectomy procedures making particular note of anything that may have gone wrong. At the very minimum, if everything went well, say so. Experiment information This section is to include all the following information: -experiment name -recording system used, rig used -array used -if eccentricity information is going to be taken, note location of piece according to pin# -isolated vs. RPE -dissection information for the piece -stimulus information -relevant information pertaining to events during and inbetween recordings -array corners **** See 2003-09-19 for good example of a detailed notebook. **** Experiments within a given experiment date are named according to the order of the piece recorded from. For example, say you are doing a guinea pig experiment. You dissect out a piece, put it up, responses are not great, so you decide to dissect out another piece without recording from the first piece. The non-recorded piece would not get an experiment name, but detailed notes about the dissection, responses, etc should still be included in the notebook. You dissect out a second piece, responses look nice and you decide to record from this piece. The experiments involving this piece should be named: "2004-01-18-0". If you go on to record from more pieces then they should be named in the order that they are recorded from. If you do not record from any other pieces, then the piece named -0 should be changed to "2004-01-18." Again, any notes about pieces you attempt but do not record from should remain in the notebook. If you record from a piece but throw out the data, be sure to make note of that in the notebook. Briefly, here's a guide to standard stimulus documention for receptive fields: ex: Data051 RGB binary 12-8-0.48, seed 11111 ndf 0.6 The stimulus documention for receptive fields break down as follows: -Data051 refers to the spike file number; spike file numbers within an experiment always start with Data000 -RGB vs. black and white stimulus -binary vs. gaussian distribution of the stimulus -12 refers to the stixel size, which is square (this isn't necessarily true. It's recently come to our attention that the stixels have not been perfectly square and this is being worked on by Valerie and EJ) so in the index entry, stixel-width and stixel-height should be the same -8 refers to the time interval. whatever number is here, divide by 8 to get the interval number for the index file. This is not true for some of the older stimulus. If the number is not divisible by 8, check the other index entries for the particular experiment and their corresponding notebook entries to figure out what your interval number should be -0.48 refers to the contrast -seed 11111 refers to the randomly drawn sequence of stimulus. -ndf 0.6 refers to the ndf used on the cage Any events that occur during or inbetween stimulus runs should be included in the notes too. For example, if solution is added, if there is weird noise, if spikes rates fall, responses are stable etc. Again refer to 2003-09-19. Notes for follow-up or general experiment information These are notes to yourself and others about issues that need to be dealt with. For example, these are the notes from 2004-01-09: * pipes in 512 setup need to be moved so they don't interfere with objective. centering was a real challenge because of this. * UCSC group should always have two arrays for a monkey experiment. one is not enough. * there seems to a bad chip on the 512 array, this needs to be examined * pipes in 512 not in good shape: suction can overwhelm flow and cause optical change, as probably happened in this experiment. so we should make them more like rig A, which doesn't have these problems. * plug #3 (according to notes on white board, it is plug #2) used in Rig B needs to be made more heavy, sit flat * forklift in B needs to be adjusted so that array doesn't move when up against stops -- had some movement during experiment * chamber grounds going bad in Rig A * flow controllers messing us up a lot -- flow gets very low in both rigs. Could have been due to pen/strep antibiotic being added after solution filtered. Should add pen/strep prior to filtering. * better replacement ground wire situation * attach pinhole covers to Rachel's goggles * darken temperature controller modules * test in-chamber feedback for temperature control, perhaps attached to inflow pipe * condenser holder in Rig B sucks * plug lowering in rig B not quite right, box doesn't get positioned right * bubbling of big bicarb bottle not right -- use aluminum foil rather than lid **** Just be sure to actually deal with these issues and not ignore them**** Finally, please remember that these notes will be here long after you've gone and will be read by others who will need a clear understanding of what happened in the experiment. Please be sure to write your notebook such that it will be understandable to other members of the lab.