Journal: bioRxiv

Article Title: An Operant-based Touchscreen Morph Discrimination Task Does Not Detect Age-related Mnemonic Similarity Deficits in Rats

doi: 10.64898/2026.04.30.722044

Figure Lengend Snippet: (A) Representative image of a rat undergoing magazine training in Touchscreen operant chamber. During this phase, rats learned to associate the food magazine with reward delivery. (B) Average number of days required to reach the magazine training criterion in young and aged rats. Data are presented as mean ± SEM with individual data points overlaid and color-coded by sex.

Article Snippet: Bussey-Saksida touchscreen operant chambers were purchased though Lafayette Instrument (Lafayette, IN) and manufactured by Campden Instruments (Loughbrorough, UK).

Techniques:

Journal: bioRxiv

Article Title: An Operant-based Touchscreen Morph Discrimination Task Does Not Detect Age-related Mnemonic Similarity Deficits in Rats

doi: 10.64898/2026.04.30.722044

Figure Lengend Snippet: (A) Representative images illustrating the three shaping phases: Fullscreen Anytouch, Progressive, and Full+Mask. In the Fullscreen Anytouch phase, the entire touchscreen is responsive, allowing the rat to learn the screen-touching response. The Progressive phase reduces the responsive area to the top half of the screen, reinforcing directed nose-poke behavior. The Full+Mask phase introduces a physical mask that reveals only three response windows, refining spatially targeted responding. (B) Average number of days required to reach criterion for each shaping phase in young (Y) and aged (A) rats. Data are presented as mean ± SEM with individual data points overlaid and color-coded by sex.

Article Snippet: Bussey-Saksida touchscreen operant chambers were purchased though Lafayette Instrument (Lafayette, IN) and manufactured by Campden Instruments (Loughbrorough, UK).

Techniques: Refining