Stereotaxic surgery and injections into the rodent brain enable precise delivery of therapeutic and research agents.
Precise injection into the basolateral amygdala allows delivery of anterograde and retrograde tracers which reveal the intricate axonal and dendritic connections stemming from this key area of the limbic system implicated with fear and emotion.
As part of a project to create a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for data management, laboratory personnel mapped out all processes from the initial pre-study briefing document, receipt, health checking and habituation of animals, in vivo procedures, up to sacrifice and collection of brain tissue for slice electrophysiological recordings and histology.
This high level process map provides a visual guide to the fundamental steps involved in this study from the completing the pre-study briefing document up to the start of analysis.
Mapping out this process enables researchers to first formalise the key steps involved in the procedure, and then identify and agree on sources of procedural variability, and other sources of risks that could affect the quality of the output.
The map also highlights parts of the process where a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is in place to control procedural variability.
This map highlights a number of key sources of variability, shown in hexagons, which vary from procedure to procedure, for example the time spent under anaesthesia with isoflurane, the exact location of the injection and the varying length of time from stereotaxic injection to brain slice patch clamping. With these potential sources of variation identified control measures can be implemented to mitigate the risk to data quality (Quality Risk Management) and the appropriate metadata required to support the integrity and accountability of the process can be captured.
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