Correction: An Automated, Experimenter-Free Method for the Standardised, Operant Cognitive Testing of Rats

Rivalan, Marion; Munawar, Humaira; Fuchs, Anna; Winter, York

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0176807

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Along with stress from handling, which varies between experimenters and, therefore, differentially impacts upon task performance ( Deutsch-Feldman et al, 2015 ; Sorge et al, 2014 ; Meijer et al, 2007 ), manual transfer to test chambers at times that suit the experimenter is insensitive to the current motivational state of the animal. Thus, while the wide adoption of touchscreen cognitive testing has already yielded substantial benefits for behavioral neuroscience, the next frontier lies in the automation of the role of the experimenter in gatekeeping touchscreen access ( Rivalan et al, 2017 ; Winter and Schaefers, 2011 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently, the capacity to monitor and track rodents in social groups has become achievable with radiofrequency identification (RFID) technology ( Peleh et al, 2019 ; Redfern et al, 2017 ) in combination with gating access to test chambers based on a method of automatic animal sorting ( Winter and Schaefers, 2011 ; Caglayan et al, 2021 ; Kaupert et al, 2017 ). The development of a fully automated, experimenter-free method for touchscreen-based cognitive testing in rats has been ongoing since the first prototype was constructed in 2017, allowing the successful adaptation of the trial-unique non-matching to location (TUNL) task in an environment that both eliminates experimenter intervention and allows animals to live in social groups throughout testing ( Rivalan et al, 2017 ). This study demonstrated that the learning rate of self-motivated and undisturbed rats was much faster when experimenter involvement is removed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rapid, automated, and experimenter-free touchscreen testing reveals reciprocal interactions between cognitive flexibility and activity-based anorexia in female rats

Huang

Milton

Dempsey

et al. 2023

eLife

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Anorexia nervosa has among the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric disorder and is characterised by cognitive inflexibility that persists after weight recovery and contributes to the low rates of recovery. What remains unknown is whether cognitive inflexibility predisposes individuals to anorexia nervosa, a question that is difficult to determine from human studies. Our previous work using the most well-established animal model of anorexia nervosa, known as activity-based anorexia (ABA) identified a neurobiological link between cognitive inflexibility and susceptibility to pathological weight loss in female rats. However, testing flexible learning prior to exposure to ABA in the same animals has been thus far impossible due to the length of training required and the necessity of daily handling, which can itself influence the development of ABA. Here we describe experiments that validate and optimise the first fully-automated and experimenter-free touchscreen cognitive testing system for rats and use this novel system to examine the reciprocal links between reversal learning (an assay of cognitive flexibility) and weight loss in the ABA model. Firstly, we show substantially reduced testing time and increased throughput compared to conventional touchscreen testing methods because animals engage in test sessions at their own direction and can complete multiple sessions per day without experimenter involvement. We also show that, contrary to expectations, cognitive inflexibility measured by this reversal learning task does not predispose rats to pathological weight loss in ABA. Instead, rats that were predisposed to weight loss in ABA exhibited better flexible learning on some aspects of this task prior to ABA exposure. Intriguingly, we show reciprocal links between ABA exposure and cognitive flexibility, with ABA exposed (but weight recovered) rats performing much worse than ABA naïve rats on the reversal learning task, an impairment that did not occur to the same extent in rats exposed to food restriction conditions alone. On the other hand, animals that had been trained on reversal learning were better able to resist weight loss upon subsequent exposure to the ABA model. We also uncovered some stable behavioural differences between ABA susceptible versus resistant rats during touchscreen test sessions using machine learning tools that highlight possible predictors of anorectic phenotypes. These findings shed new light on the relationship between cognitive inflexibility and pathological weight loss and provide targets for future studies using the ABA model to investigate potential novel pharmacotherapies for anorexia nervosa.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid, automated, and experimenter-free touchscreen testing reveals reciprocal interactions between cognitive flexibility and activity-based anorexia in female rats

Huang

Milton

Dempsey

et al. 2023

eLife

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“…Significant attempts have been made recently towards automated behavioral training 9 – 12 , 15 , 16 , 38 , 39 . One of the first automated training systems has been introduced in the Brody lab (Princeton University, US) for training rats on a flexible and expandable set of decision making tasks 9 , 40 , 41 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient training of mice on the 5-choice serial reaction time task in an automated rodent training system

Birtalan

Bánhidi

Sanders

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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Experiments aiming to understand sensory-motor systems, cognition and behavior necessitate training animals to perform complex tasks. Traditional training protocols require lab personnel to move the animals between home cages and training chambers, to start and end training sessions, and in some cases, to hand-control each training trial. Human labor not only limits the amount of training per day, but also introduces several sources of variability and may increase animal stress. Here we present an automated training system for the 5-choice serial reaction time task (5CSRTT), a classic rodent task often used to test sensory detection, sustained attention and impulsivity. We found that full automation without human intervention allowed rapid, cost-efficient training, and decreased stress as measured by corticosterone levels. Training breaks introduced only a transient drop in performance, and mice readily generalized across training systems when transferred from automated to manual protocols. We further validated our automated training system with wireless optogenetics and pharmacology experiments, expanding the breadth of experimental needs our system may fulfill. Our automated 5CSRTT system can serve as a prototype for fully automated behavioral training, with methods and principles transferrable to a range of rodent tasks.

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“…Yet, research in recent decades explored how the FEP could be applied in the lab. Laboratory FEP setups usually consist of a home cage and a testing device, e.g., operant walls (Kiryk et al, 2020), a touch screen box (Rivalan et al, 2017) or mazes such as the radial arm maze (Mei et al, 2020;Kohler et al, 2022). Figure 3 shows an example where the two are connected by a so-called sorter that recognizes the RFID-chipped mouse, ensures that only one animal enters the test device alone, and then starts individual tests in the test device via a connected computer.…”

Section: Laboratorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Making a case for the free exploratory paradigm: animal welfare-friendly assays that enhance heterozygosity and ecological validity

Parsons

Stryjek

Fendt

et al. 2023

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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Correction: An Automated, Experimenter-Free Method for the Standardised, Operant Cognitive Testing of Rats

Cited by 7 publications

References 1 publication

Rapid, automated, and experimenter-free touchscreen testing reveals reciprocal interactions between cognitive flexibility and activity-based anorexia in female rats

Rapid, automated, and experimenter-free touchscreen testing reveals reciprocal interactions between cognitive flexibility and activity-based anorexia in female rats

Efficient training of mice on the 5-choice serial reaction time task in an automated rodent training system

Making a case for the free exploratory paradigm: animal welfare-friendly assays that enhance heterozygosity and ecological validity

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