An Open Source Syringe Pump Controller for Fluid Delivery of Multiple Volumes

Syringe pumps are a necessary piece of laboratory equipment that are used for fluid delivery in behavioral neuroscience laboratories. Many experiments provide rodents and primates with fluid rewards such as juice, water, or liquid sucrose. Current commercialized syringe pumps are not customizable and do not have the ability to deliver multiple volumes of fluid based on different inputs to the pump. Additionally, many syringe pumps are expensive and cannot be used in experiments with paired neurophysiological recordings due to electrical noise. We developed an open source syringe pump controller using commonly available parts. The controller adjusts the acceleration and speed of the motor to deliver three different volumes of fluid reward within one common time epoch. This syringe pump controller is cost effective and has been successfully implemented in rodent behavioral experiments with paired neurophysiological recordings in the rat frontal cortex while rats lick for different volumes of liquid sucrose rewards. Our syringe pump controller will enable new experiments to address the potential confound of temporal information in studies of reward signaling by fluid magnitude.