The Use of Touchscreen-Based Methods to Characterize Effects of Psychoactive Drugs on Executive Function in Nonhuman Primates

Galbo-Thomma, Lindsey K.; Czoty, Paul W.

doi:10.1007/s40495-023-00337-9

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 97 publications

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“…For example, when assessing drugs with pro-cognitive effects (Hassani et al, 2023) or drugs relevant for tracking or treating the degree of substance use disorder, single NHP studies have combined three or four tasks in a single study including visual discrimination, reversal learning, set shifting and working memory tasks (Gould et al, 2012; Porter et al, 2011; Kangas et al, 2016). These multi-task studies contribute impressive insights into the specificity of cognitive deficits that accompany acute and chronic drug abuse (Galbo-Thomma & Czoty, 2023), but even they did not use all 3 or 4 tasks in a single behavioral assessment session, but rather split daily sessions into those assessing, e.g. working memory, and other sessions assessing reward learning and set shifting (John et al, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Multi-task Platform for Profiling Cognitive and Motivational Constructs in Humans and Nonhuman Primates

Watson,

Traczewski,

Dunghana

et al. 2023

Preprint

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BackgroundUnderstanding the neurobiological substrates of psychiatric disorders requires comprehensive evaluations of cognitive and motivational functions in preclinical research settings. The translational validity of such evaluations will be supported by (1) tasks with high construct validity that are engaging and easy to teach to human and nonhuman participants, (2) software that enables efficient switching between multiple tasks in single sessions, (3) software that supports tasks across a broad range of physical experimental setups, and (4) by platform architectures that are easily extendable and customizable to encourage future optimization and development.New MethodWe describe theMulti-task Universal Suite for Experiments(M-USE), a software platform designed to meet these requirements. It leverages the Unity video game engine and C# programming language to (1) support immersive and engaging tasks for humans and nonhuman primates, (2) allow experimenters or participants to switch between multiple tasks within-session, (3) generate builds that function across computers, tablets, and websites, and (4) is freely available online with documentation and tutorials for users and developers. M-USE includes a task library with seven pre-existing tasks assessing cognitive and motivational constructs of perception, attention, working memory, cognitive flexibility, motivational and affective self-control, relational long-term memory, and visuo-spatial problem solving.ResultsM-USE was used to test NHPs on up to six tasks per session, all available as part of the Task Library, and to extract performance metrics for all major cognitive and motivational constructs spanning the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) of the National Institutes of Mental Health.Comparison with Existing MethodsOther experiment design and control systems exist, but do not provide the full range of features available in M-USE, including a pre-existing task library for cross-species assessments; the ability to switch seamlessly between tasks in individual sessions; cross-platform build capabilities; license-free availability; and its leveraging of video-engine capabilities used to gamify tasks.ConclusionsThe new multi-task platform facilitates cross-species translational research for understanding the neurobiological substrates of higher cognitive and motivational functions.

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