Question: in you job do you ever harm the animals?

Martha Havenith answered on 15 Jun 2015:

That’s a very important question, and the answer is yes.
To put electrodes in the brain and record brain activity we have to do a surgery in which we drill through the skull. Of course we do everything to keep the animals comfortable – we give them pain killers before and after, we obviously anaesthetize them, we practice to do the surgery as quick and clean as possible – and usually they are back to normal after about two days. But a surgery is still a surgery.
The first time they go into the computer game the mice are also pretty stressed for 5-10 minutes (it’s a superstrange environment for them after all), until they realize they can get soy milk.
And finally, we do have to kill animals after a certain age, because they can’t run around with electrodes in their brain forever. Again, we do that without inflicting pain (they simply ‘fall asleep’), but it is definitely a sad part of the job. I personally find it less disturbing to kill animals humanely at some point than to treat them badly during their life time, so we are super-careful to keep them as happy as possible while they are with us.