ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Protocol page > The elements of a protocol > Inputs and outputs > Shockers > Setting up a shocker > Specifying the absolute maximum shock duration and intensity

Specifying the absolute maximum shock duration and intensity

Introduction

As you may know, to activate a shocker you need to create a procedure which will determine that some situation has arisen and switch the shocker on, i.e. administer a shock.

In fact, there are three actions which a procedure can perform on a shocker: administer a shock, set the shock duration and set the shock intensity, and it is this ability to alter the shock duration and intensity which are important here. Consider the following situation: you create a procedure which will increase the shock intensity by 1mA each time the animal does something - for example, enters a zone. Clearly then, if the animal enters the zone 20 times the shock intensity is going to end up increasing by 20mA!

In fact, your shocker is unlikely to actually be able to administer a 20mA shock, but the same thing applies to the shock duration, so you could create a similar procedure which would result in the shock duration becoming 20 seconds, or even longer.

Clearly what's needed are some limits which will prevent the shock intensity and duration from increasing ad infinitum; this is what the Maximum permitted shock duration and Maximum permitted shock intensity fields are for.

Details

The Maximum permitted shock duration and Maximum permitted shock intensity fields are automatically set to default values. If, in your protocol, you don't intend to change the shock duration and/or intensity using a procedure, then you can just leave the defaults as they are. Otherwise, you should consider what maxima for duration and intensity would be appropriate in your experiment and enter them here.

You must make an entry in both fields.

The absolute maximum duration you can enter is 60s and the absolute maximum intensity is 10mA. If your shocker doesn't support the intensity you enter, then the shock will actually be limited to the shocker's maximum rather than the value that you specify.

ANY-maze help topic T0224