“Dr. Steven Simmons has used Dodotronic 200K plug-and-play microphones to record ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) from rats. On a single PC, he has recorded up to 8 rats simultaneously at 192-kHz sampling rate in 2+ hr sessions. Paired with RavenPro software (Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology), excellent recording and analysis performance is experienced. Dodotronic’s microphones cost a fraction of what one might procure from competing companies and perform similar to externally polarized condenser microphones. At high amplification, users may experience momentary “skips” in the streaming/recording, but even these will not obfuscate manual USV detection – a solution for this is to reduce the internal (microphone-based) amplifier and amplify via recording software. For automatic detection, users should optimize recording conditions (signal:noise) within their laboratory settings and perform comparisons with manually-scored data. In his research, Dr. Simmons and colleagues detect and analyze USVs to gain insight into affective changes occurring across the course of addiction using an experimental model of intravenous drug self-administration. A full listing of Dr. Simmons’ published works utilizing USV recordings can be found here. For more detail, please feel free to contact Dr. Simmons at steven.james.simmons@gmail.com
