Laboratory Facilities: As a result of a Department of Education grant (approximate award 1.5 million dollars), the first floor of Asbury Building on American University campus was completely renovated in 1988 to house the animal research laboratories and a common vivarium. The Psychopharmacology Laboratory (one of the research laboratories in this complex) consists of an eight room suite (approximately 1700 square feet) devoted to aversion learning, conditioned place preference conditioning, schedule-induced polydipsia drug discrimination learning, schedule-controlled responding and drug self administration. The physical space consists of a central control room which houses nine IBM computers for running research, data analysis and word processing, three running rooms, a drug injection and a drug preparation room and a room devoted to fluorescent microsopy. Adjacent to the lab is an office for the students.

All of the animals for our research are maintained in an adjacent animal holding area. This common vivarium has a total of seven animal rooms of which the lab has four. Each of these rooms can house three stainless-steel holding racks which in turn can each accommodate 36 hanging cages or 25 breeder bins. Adjacent to these housing rooms is a washing area for bottle and cage washing, holding room for the storage of food, bedding and cages and a common room in which drug manipulations can be made. This area also contains a common surgery and histology suite.

Animal care is provided by individual graduate students involved in specific research projects. The individual laboratories as well as the common vivarium are inspected monthly by Dr. Bernard Flynn (Veterinarian) and the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.

Major Equipment: The major equipment in the Psychopharmacology Laboratory includes nine IBM computers, two HP Laserjet printers, 12 operant chambers, two Med Associates interfaces, eight mouse and rat automated conditioned place preference chambers, six additional rat conditioned place preference chambers (and accompanying camcorders for observations), twelve Wahmann running wheels, two automated startle chambers, three automated open field test chambers, a Metler analytical balance, an O'Haus analytical balance, two Ainsworth top loading balances, cryostat, fluorescent microscope, two Fisher pH meters, two Fisher vortices, two Fisher heated stirrers, a fume hood, two refrigerators, a freezer, a Class V safe, a Fisher still, a drying oven, a fluorometer, a spectrophotometer and eleven stainless-steel cage racks (with a capacity to house over 300 animals).