Harmonization of the fastest and densest responses embodies the humanlike reaction time of mice

Abstract

Reaction time (RT) is a crucial component for evaluating delayed latency in behavior. Animals' RT, in which the stimulus-response relationship is not one-to-one due to repeated responses per trial, unlike humans, may not be a single latency but may involve two peak latencies of the fastest and densest responses within distributed responses. We investigated whether the two peak latencies are aligned for a single RT by handling stimulus duration. In delay conditioning with C57BL/6 mice using sound cues of 10, 5, and 2 s, the 2-s group only showed the strongest positive correlations between the two peaks, alongside HE frequency and accuracy rate. This suggests coupling of fastest and densest responses, and a one-to-one relation of stimulus and response, respectively. We propose that the harmonization between the two peaks, elicited by stimuli prompting minimal responses, serves as a criterion for designing animal experiments to mimic human-like RT.