Captains Log Day 0018 and 0019: Extinction Days 1 and 2

The last part of our project was to extinguish the behavior that we had just taught. When we say extinguish the behavior basically we are talking about when we put our rat back in the box but no matter what she does she does not get a reward. Once we put Captain Kirk in the box she immediately went over to the lever and started pressing it. After a while she gave up. In the graphs below you can see how on day one the behavior was almost extinguished but on day two we had a slight recovery then it dropped out even faster. By the end of our second extinction day Captain Kirk was no longer pressing the lever. During the extinction process we saw some weird behaviors. She would hang on to the walls and lights and then stand up and sniff the air. Every so often she would go over and try to force food out of the hopper. By the end of the second day though she just sat in the corner sniffing and grooming herself.

Below are two graphs. The first graph is day one extinction and the second one is day two extinction.