New preprint from Sipe laboratory examining citric acid water on mouse motivation

Citric acid (CA) water is a motivational technique where home cage water is made sour by CA so that animals will work for non-CA water rewards in behavioral experiments. Our characterization provides important contributions towards standardizing CA water as a motivational technique and ensuring that CA water yields both high trial numbers and replicable results across labs. This work was driven by Brenna Manuel in the lab - well done Brenna!

“Citric acid water effects on mouse health, motivation, and performance in virtual reality locomotion-based tasks“

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.04.742856v1