Touchscreen Cognition Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

One of the major advantages of using touchscreen technology is the ability to precisely control the stimuli and other experimental parameters presented to animals, allowing for identical experiences across different cohorts and laboratories.  To further the aim of replication and reliable cognitive testing, the following are some SOPs used by the Translational Cognitive Neuroscience (TCNLab), the Mouse Neurobehavioural Core and BrainsCAN labs at Western University.  These SOPs are updated as new tasks are developed and old ones are further optimized.  Please check back frequently to get our most up-to-date version available.

Do you have an SOP you would like to contribute?  Please contact us or ask any questions about a current SOP in our Forums.  Your comments and SOPs may be added to this page.

Please note that the ABETII file names in the SOPs may differ across different users and facilities. 

Mouse SOPs

• Autoshaping
• Cognitive Judgement Bias Task (CJB)
• Continuous Performance Task (CPT)
• Delayed & Effort Discounting – coming soon
• Extinction
• Five Choice Serial Reaction Time (5-CSRTT)
• Rodent Gambling Task (rGT) – coming soon
• Heterogenous Sequence Task (HST)
• Location Discrimination (LD)
• Paired-Associate Learning (PAL)
• Pairwise Visual Discrimination (PVD) and Pairwise Visual Reversal (PVR)
• Progressive Ratio (PR)
• Probabilistic Reversal Learning (PRL)
• Trial-Unique, Nonmatching-to-Location (TUNL) – coming soon
• Valence Probe Visual Discrimination (VPVD) – coming soon
• Visual-Motor Conditional Learning (VMCL)

Rat SOPs

• Five Choice Serial Reaction Time Task (5-CSRTT)
• Trial-Unique, Nonmatching-to-Location (TUNL)
• Touchscreen System Maintenance (Rat)

Other Helpful Touchscreen-Related Documents

• Touchscreen Cleaning
• Touchscreen Operant System: Common Issues
• Exporting Analysis in XML format in ABETII
• Troubleshooting Touchscreen Operant Chambers

Touchscreen Methods Papers

For more details, you may find the following papers helpful:

• Heath, C.J., Phillips, B., Saksida, L.M., & Bussey, T.J. (2016) Measuring motivation and reward-related decision making in the rodent operant touchscreen system. Current Protocols, 73:8.34.1-20. doi: 10.1002/0471142301.ns0834s74

• Horner, A.E., Heath, C.J., Hvoslef-Eide, M., Kent, B.A., Kim, C.H., Nilsson, S., Alsiö, J., Oomen, C.A., Holmes, A., Saksida, L.M., & Bussey, T.J. (2013) The touchscreen operant platform for testing learning and memory in rats and mice. Nature Protocols, 8(10):1961-1984. doi: 10.1038/nprot.2013.122

• Mar, A.C., Horner, A.E., Nilsson, S., Alsiö, J., Kent, B.A., Kim, C.H., Holmes, A., Saksida, L.M., & Bussey, T.J. (2013) The touchscreen operant platform for assessing executive function in rats and mice. Nature Protocols, 8(10):1985-2005. doi: 10.1038/nprot.2013.123

• Oomen, C.A., Hvoslef-Eide, M., Heath, C.J., Mar, A.C., Horner, A.E., Bussey, T.J., & Saksida, L.M. (2013) The touchscreen operant platform for testing working memory and pattern separation in rats and mice. Nature Protocols, 8(10):2006-2021. doi: 10.1038/nprot.2013.124

Helpful Neurotech Documents

• Optogenetic Best Practices – Step by step guide to making probes which can be used for optogenetics (or fibre photometry) as well as other experimental considerations.