ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Protocol page > The elements of a protocol > Inputs and outputs > Shockers > Setting up a shocker > Specifying whether the physical port used by a shocker is always the same

Specifying whether the physical port used by a shocker is always the same

In brief

In the majority of situations, the physical port used by a shocker will always be the same. However, you may encounter situations in which the port depends on the location of a movable zone.

For example, in a Y-maze, you may have shock floor in the base of each arm of the maze. Now you want to create an element called 'Aversive arm shocker' (let's imagine that after the animal is in the aversive arm for 10s, it will receive a shock), but you have set the 'Aversive arm' to be a movable zone - i.e. it isn't always the same physical arm of the maze, but changes between tests.

Thus the 'Aversive arm shocker' will be the shocker for whichever arm happens to be the aversive arm in a particular test, which necessarily means it won't always be the same physical shocker and therefore the 'Aversive arm shocker' won't always be connected to the same physical port.

Details

If you do have a shocker whose physical port depends on the location of a movable zone, like in the Y-maze example above, then you simply need to specify this by selecting the appropriate option from the drop-down list in the shocker element's page of the protocol. (Note that this list is only displayed when the protocol includes one or more movable zones).

When you do this, the element will automatically be given one 'Port to use' sub-element for each location of the movable zone you chose - so in the Y-maze example, there will be three 'Port to use' sub-elements, one for each arm of the maze. You'll then be able to use these sub-elements to specify which port is used for each of the possible locations of the zone.

ANY-maze help topic T0225