2004A0166 - Effects of Alcohol on Object Recognition and Hippocampal Function

The principal investigator in submitting his protocol must include a section, Lay Explanation of Project. This section is sometimes used to explain to the public the goals of the project, who benefits from the project, humans or animals, and how humans or animals will benefit.

I guess I see conflicting statements in the lay abstract presented and what the PI says in his description and rationale for the project. In the lay abstract Givens writes: "Our results are expected to replicate previous object recognition experiments, but in addition show that there is a significant decrease in novelty-seeking behavior with alcohol. This experiment could help benefit humans by furthering our knowledge of alcoholism and the effect of alcohol."

In other sections Givens writes that the experiment is "designed to help resolve contradictory finding in literature which use different time delays in an object recognition task."

So this has nothing to do with learning more about alcohol and how it effects mice or that usual statement "helps benefit humans". It's to "help establish an automatic data-collecting process versus an open field process".

From a human experience I'd also question that there "is a significant decrease in novelty-seeking behavior with alcohol." What school did Givens attend? Would those college pranks have been attempted without alcohol?

There are many reasons this experiment should not have been approved with another being: "the effects of alcohol on rats have shown impaired performance in object recognition tasks, and we wish to find the same effect in mice." Go into a bar on a Friday or Saturday and I imagine you could find many humans with impaired performance. Oh yes that's right you can't kill them after the experiment. This is just another example of animal lives being wasted at OSU.