operant chamber for rats for use with touch-screen monitor
Date: circa 1998
Inventory Number: 2004-1-0403a
Classification: Operant Conditioning Chamber
Dimensions:59 x 115 x 48 cm (23 1/4 x 45 1/4 x 18 7/8 in.)
touchscreen: 31 x 36 x 44 cm (12 3/16 x 14 3/16 x 17 5/16 in.)
computer: 12 x 42 x 39 cm (4 3/4 x 16 9/16 x 15 3/8 in.)
chamber: 59 x 72 x 48 cm (23 1/4 x 28 3/8 x 18 7/8 in.)
Accessories: computer (2004-1-0403b); computer screen with mask (2004-1-0403c); plus a control box; spare Plexiglas touchscreen mask; food pellet distributor
Description2004-1-0403a-c is an (a) enclosed operant conditioning chamber for a rat, which has a (b) computer attached that drives a (c) touch-screen monitor.
2004-1-0403a:
The operant chamber is enclosed in a wooden box opened at one end to accommodate the computer monitor and touchscreen. The interior is lined with Styrofoam. A door on the side with a clear red Plexiglas panel permitted covert viewing of the rat during testing sessions.
The rat operant chamber itself is made of a clear Plexiglas box. It has a metal floor and a touch-sensitive computer screen was put at one end. The opposite end of the chamber has a weight-sensitive floor panel located in front of a food magazine with an infrared detector, connected to an automatic pellet dispenser (from MED Associates Inc.). The box is also equipped with a houselight and tone generator in the ceiling and a light above the food magazine.
The front of the computer screen (2004-1-0403c) is covered with a black Plexiglas mask that contains three open viewing windows (8 × 9 cm) over a spring-mounted shelf. This mask served to encourage the rat to rear and touch the computer screen in three distinct areas.
The touchscreen and other electronic components (like the control box for the pressure plate and food dispenser) were controlled by custom-written programs in Visual Basic. These programs placed all elements of the testing program under computer control. The computer used was a Hewlett Packard (2004-1-0403b).
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FunctionFrom the abstract of the article authored by Agnieszka Janisiewicz and Mark Baxter: "The authors examined visual-spatial conditional learning with automated touchscreen tasks in male Long-Evans rats with selective lesions of medial septal/vertical limb of diagonal band (MS/VDB) cholinergic neurons produced by 192 IgG-saporin. Performance on a conditional task, in which 1 of 2 centrally displayed stimuli directed the rat to respond to an illuminated panel on the left or right, depended on training history: Control rats with experience on other visual tasks performed better than MS/VDB-lesioned rats with similar training histories, whereas this effect was reversed in naive rats. This difference appears to reflect transfer effects present in the control rats that are absent in the MS/VDB-lesioned rats. These findings may suggest that MS/VDB cholinergic neurons play a particular role in the transfer of behavioral experience and flexibility of application of behavioral rules in memory, rather than a role in conditional learning per se."
From that same article, we learn how it worked: "The general test sequence was programmed so that the rat was required to press the floor panel in front of the food magazine to begin a trial and touch the image designated as correct on the computer screen to receive a reward. If the rat chose correctly, then the tone generator was activated for 1 s, the light over the food magazine was illuminated, and a single 45-mg pellet (Research Diets, New Brunswick, NJ) was delivered to the feeder. Three seconds after the rat put his head in the feeder to retrieve the reward pellet (detected by the infrared detector on the food magazine), another trial could be initiated by standing on the floor panel. If the rat chose incorrectly, no food pellet was released and the houselight was extinguished for 5 s. After this interval, the houselight was reilluminated and standing on the floor plate would initiate a new trial." (p. 1344)
Historical AttributesAccording to Prof. Baxter, who used this chamber when he was at Harvard: "Most of the work with these apparatus comes out of Trevor Robbins's lab at Cambridge [University] ... The systems I used in the lab at Harvard were constructed under Tim's [Bussey] direction by the Research Services Branch at the NIMH as part of a collaboration with the Laboratory of Neuropsychology there."
About the apparatus' experimental life, Prof. Baxter also said: "The experiment reported in the 2003 Behavioral Neuroscience paper was the only one that ever saw the light of day from the touchscreens."
ProvenanceDepartment of Psychology, William James Hall, Harvard University.
Published ReferencesA. M. Janisiewicz and M. G. Baxter, "Transfer Effects and Conditional Learning in Rats with Selective Lesions of Medial Septal/Diagonal Band Cholinergic Neurons," Behavioral Neuroscience 117 (2003): 1342-1352.
Related WorksT. J. Bussey, J. L. Muir, and T. W. Robbins, "A Novel Automated Touchscreen Procedure for Assessing Learning in the Rat using Computer Graphic Stimuli," Neuroscience Research Communications 15 (1994): 103-110.
T. J. Bussey, B. J. Everitt, and T. W. Robbins, "Dissociable Effects of Cingulate and Medial Frontal Cortex Lesions on Stimulus-Reward Learning Using a Novel Pavlovian Autoshaping Procedure for the Rat: Implications for the Neurobiology of Emotion," Behavioral Neuroscience 111 (1997): 908-919.
T. J. Bussey, J. L. Muir, B. J. Everitt, and T. W. Robbins, "Triple Dissociation of Anterior Cingulate, Posterior Cingulate, and Medial Frontal Cortices on Visual Discrimination Tasks Using a Touchscreen Testing Procedure for the Rat," Behavioral Neuroscience 111 (1997): 920-936.