Applied Research

PROJECT SUMMARY: APPLIED RESEARCH COMPONENT The Squirrel Monkey Breeding and Research Resource (SMBRR), P40 OD010938 has received continuous NIH grant support since 1980. The SMBRR’s proposed applied research component will include projects that will broaden the application and usefulness of the resource for the user community, as well as provide information that will allow for better management of the colony itself. The proposed behavioral phenotyping project is designed to increase the available squirrel monkeys pretrained on an automated cognitive testing system (ACTS). These monkeys can then be used by SBMRR users in a variety of research programs that use operant responding or assess cognitive functions as a primary outcome measure in the disease model. Additionally, the use of the ACTS within or breeding colony will allow for assessment of health status and impending parturition. Studies in the applied component will also examine the impact of iron supplementation on reproductive outcome as a means of decreasing fetal wastage. Finally, studies in the applied component will also measure the impact of xylazine administration on brain, behavior and cognition in the squirrel monkeys. Xylazine is common anesthetic with nonhuman primates including with squirrel monkeys within the SMBRR. Recent studies have shown the xylazine has significant abuse liability and can have acute and long-term impacts on behavioral and brain function. We will compare age-sex matched squirrel monkey cohorts receive either xylazine alone, xylazine + ketamine or a vehicle on their cognitive, neurological morphology and functional connectivity. These outcome data will help inform management and veterinarian care practices on the use of xylazine as an anesthetic in this species.