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