The heart of the McSweeney Lab is the control room. The control room contains several computers responsible for controlling the experimental contingencies in the operant chambers.
Rats are, perhaps, the most widely used nonhuman animal in biomedical and psychological research.
Thus, it is not surprising that the McSweeney Lab honors this tradition. Our rats leverpress for food pellets on several schedules of reinforcement. Beginning with the legendary work of B. F. Skinner, pigeons have been used extensively in behavioral research. At first blush, pigeons might not seem like the ideal laboratory subject, but there are several advantages to using an avian species to study animal learning and behavior. First, pigeons are easily trained and handled.