STANFORD UNIVERSITY HALL OF SHAME 2005 (Cruel and Unnecessary Animal "Research")

Name: MOORE, TIRIN
Project Title: Interaction of Visual and Oculomotor Signals in Cortex

Tests “visual perception” by inserting wires deep into monkeys’ brains to record single brain cell activity while they are alert, restrained and made to perform eye movements.
His Justification: “The long-term goal of this proposal is to understand the reciprocal interactions between oculomotor and vision mechanisms in the primate brain.”

Project Start & End: 20-SEP-2004 to 31-JUL-2009
Funded by: NATIONAL EYE INSTITUTE

Name: LYONS, DAVID M.
Project Title: Early Chronic Stress and Prefrontal Development

Induces chronic stress in young squirrel monkeys and causes them to ingest cocaine.
His Justification: “Based on indications that stressful conditions alter developing brain systems in rats, the proposed research investigates chronic early stress effects on subsequent prefrontal correlates of cognitive control, novelty-seeking behavior, dopamine neurochemistry, and sensitivity to cocaine in adolescent squirrel monkeys.”

Project Start & End: 01-AUG-2003 to 31-MAY-2006
Funded by: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DRUG ABUSE

Name: MIGNOT, EMMANUEL J. (Director)
Project Title: Role of Hypocretin in Metabolic Effects of Sleep Loss


Deprives monkeys, rats and mice of sleep to study “metabolism and body weight regulation.”
His Justification: “We will use acute and chronic sleep deprivation…and adapt them to conduct chronic sleep deprivation in metabolic recording chambers. We hypothesize that in these animal models chronic sleep deprivation will increase food intake more than energy expenditure, resulting in weight gain.”

Project Start & End: 15-SEP-2004 to 30-JUN-2009
Funded by: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH

Name: CORRADO, GREGORY S.
Project Title: Motion Segmentation & Transparency: Psychophysics & Physiology

Participates with William Newsome (see next) in his monkey brain-poking lab.
His Justification: To test predictions at the perceptual level, examining the interaction between the transparent motion depth illusion and binocular disparity...(and) test predictions at the physiological level, elucidating the neural representation of segmented transparent motion in cortical area MT.”

Project Start & End: 21-JUN-2004 to 20-JUN-2007
Funded by: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF NEUROLOGICAL DISORDERS AND STROKE

Name: NEWSOME, WILLIAM T.
Project Title: Cortical Processing of Visual Motion

Tests monkeys’ “behavior”, “cognition”, “decision making” and “vision” by inserting wires into the brain of alert and restrained monkeys, to stimulate and record single brain cell activity.
His Justification: “The long-term goal of this research is to understand the neural mechanisms underlying simple forms of visually based cognition, including visually based decision-making in particular.”

Project Start: 01-JAN-1985 to 31-JUL-2008
Funded by: NATIONAL EYE INSTITUTE

Name: DARIAN-SMITH, CORINNA J.
Project Title: Hand Use and Neuronal Plasticity After Dorsal Rhizotomy

Injures the spinal nerves of animals and forces monkeys to perform hand gripping tasks after damaging the sensory nerves to their hands to study neural “reorganization.”
Her Justification: “Although reorganization has been demonstrated, we still know relatively little about the neural basis for it, where it occurs, and how such changes mediate behavioral recovery or compensation.”

(This is trivial pursuit because people recover from and adapt to injuries in their own unique way.)

Project Start: 15-SEP-2004 to 30-JUN-2008
Funded by: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF NEUROLOGICAL DISORDERS AND STROKE

Name: RAYMOND, JENNIFER L.
Project Title: Vestibular and Visual Control of Eye Movement

Restrains monkeys in chairs for many hours with wires inserted deep into their brains, and makes them wear special goggles which causes dizziness and forces them to turn their heads.
Her Justification: “The proposed experiments examine the neural mechanisms of VOR adaptation through a systematic analysis of the correlation between 1) the patterns of neural activity present in the circuit for the VOR during the induction of learning, 2) the altered activity in the circuit during the expression of learning, and 3) the behavioral changes that are induced.”

Project Start: 30-SEP-1999 to 31-MAY-2008
Funded by: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DEAFNESS AND OTHER COMMUNICATION DISORDERS

Name: SHENOY, KRISHNA V.
Project Title: CRCNS: Extracting Dynamical Structure Embedded in Motor Preparatory Activity

Monkeys are restrained in chairs with wires inserted deep into their brains while forced to perform hand-reaching movements.
His Justification: “The proposed research will develop and validate algorithms for parameter estimation, and then characterize the dynamics in PMd data recorded from an electrode array while monkeys perform delayed-reach tasks. Single trial estimates of underlying dynamics can then be used to predict variation in details of reaching motor behavior.”

Project Start & End: 01-SEP-2005 to 31-AUG-2010
Funded by: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF NEUROLOGICAL DISORDERS AND STROKE