{"id":2068,"date":"2026-05-06T15:13:51","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/whscl-news\/?p=2068"},"modified":"2026-05-06T15:13:51","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:13:51","slug":"3d-printing-and-the-neuroscience-of-group-projects-with-mice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/whscl-news\/?p=2068","title":{"rendered":"3D Printing and the Neuroscience of Group Projects (with mice!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever worked on a group project where it\u00a0just feels like not everyone is pulling their weight?\u00a0Maybe all\u00a0the work is falling to one person\u2014maybe that person has been you!\u00a0This near-universal experience, it turns out, is also shared by mice, as Emory PhD candidate Jari Javier\u00a0has\u00a0discovered at the\u00a0<\/span>Murugan Lab<\/span><\/a>\u00a0here on campus. Mice, with their complex behavioral and social\u00a0hierarchies, are\u00a0great\u00a0stand-ins for studying human social interactions\u00a0like the neuroscience of group behaviors.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It starts\u00a0pretty simple: put a mouse in a box where they can push a button and get a reward. (In this case, the reward is sugar water\u2014sweets being beloved by all.)\u00a0Once\u00a0all the mice have learned that this is how the box works, you put three mice in the box. Then it gets interesting: what ends up happening is one mouse\u00a0(the Worker)\u00a0is doing all the work\u00a0of pushing the button, but the other two mice\u00a0(the Parasites)\u00a0camp out near the sugar water\u00a0dispenser\u00a0reaping\u00a0all the rewards.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Why do the mice settle into these\u00a0categories of Workers and Parasites? The team at Murugan Lab set out to explore whether social hierarchies such as dominance could explain why some mice become Workers and some mice become Parasites. To test this theory, they\u00a0developed a urine-marking test: place two\u00a0mice in a box with absorbent paper, physically separated by a divider, and\u00a0observe\u00a0where they mark with urine. More\u00a0dominant mice will mark closer to the divider (and the other\u00a0mouse’s\u00a0territory).\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When labs such as Murugan develop tests for their subjects, there’s not necessarily standard equipment available to\u00a0purchase\u00a0that will suit their exact needs\u2014so\u00a0there’s\u00a0a lot of creativity and tinkering\u00a0to get the right setup. For this test, Jari needed\u00a0a contraption that would separate the mice but still allow them to interact with\u00a0each other, and\u00a0be sturdy enough that the mice\u00a0couldn’t\u00a0knock it down. The mice also liked\u00a0to tear up the\u00a0edges\u00a0of the absorbent paper, so some\u00a0kind of barrier was needed to keep them from destroying the test material.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Enter 3D printing, and the ability to design a three-dimensional object to your exact specifications and then print them out.\u00a0Undergraduate\u00a0students\u00a0at\u00a0the lab,\u00a0Emily Chen and Joshua Kho,\u00a0designed several iterations of a system\u00a0of interlocking parts to separate the mice during the urine marking\u00a0test,\u00a0and\u00a0also\u00a0keep\u00a0them from tearing up the paper.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

They printed their prototypes and final product on\u00a0the\u00a0<\/span>PRUSA 3D printers<\/span><\/a>\u00a0at the WHSC Library, conveniently\u00a0located\u00a0a short walk away from their lab.\u00a0After all that tinkering, the 3D printed parts fit perfectly in the standard mice container that many labs use. With 3D printing, the team\u00a0is able to\u00a0print more dividers so they can run several instances of the urine marking test at once.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

And because the print fits the standard mice containers, other labs might find this to be a useful tool\u2014so the Marugan lab plans to make the plans for this print freely\u00a0available\u00a0so other mouse labs can\u00a0use them as well.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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What are the preliminary results? Well, so far it\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0seem like dominance and social hierarchies can quite explain why some mice become Workers and some mice become Parasites.\u00a0So\u00a0the\u00a0experiments\u00a0will continue.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We love seeing how\u00a0you’re\u00a0using our library resources, whether that’s books, articles, or 3D printers! If you have a story to share about how\u00a0you’ve\u00a0used 3D printing for a project,\u00a0let us know in the comments!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever worked on a group project where it\u00a0just feels like not everyone is pulling their weight?\u00a0Maybe all\u00a0the work is falling to one person\u2014maybe that person has been you!\u00a0This near-universal experience, it turns out, is also shared by mice, as Emory PhD candidate Jari Javier\u00a0has\u00a0discovered at the\u00a0Murugan Lab\u00a0here on campus. Mice, with their complex Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8372,"featured_media":2069,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[64],"class_list":["post-2068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-3d-printing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/whscl-news\/files\/2026\/05\/3D-Printing-Model-with-changes-Murugan-Lab-2.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/whscl-news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/whscl-news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/whscl-news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/whscl-news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8372"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/whscl-news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/whscl-news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2073,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/whscl-news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions\/2073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/whscl-news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/whscl-news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/whscl-news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/whscl-news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}