Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 14, 2026
The 5-Choice Serial Reaction Time Task: A Task of Attention and Impulse Control for Rodents
Published on: August 10, 2014
Assessing a vigilance decrement in aged rats: effects of pre-feeding, task manipulation, and psychostimulants
Andrew J Grottick1, Guy A Higgins
1PRBN-B, F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, 4070 Basel, Switzerland. agrottick@arenapharm.com
Rationale:
In studies assessing sustained attention in humans, performance is often characterised by a decline in function over time. This response pattern, termed the vigilance decrement, is sensitive to manipulations affecting task difficulty, and to reversal with psychostimulant drugs. A valid test of attention in non-human species requires both comparable characteristics of performance, and sensitivity to similar psychoactive drugs. The five-choice serial reaction time task (5-CSRTT) has been described as a test of sustained attention in the rat, however, studies describing vigilance decrements and performance effects of psychostimulants in this task are scarce.
Objectives:
We manipulated the standard 5-CSRTT to determine under which conditions a replicable vigilance decrement could be observed, and sought to determine whether this pattern of changes was sensitive to psychostimulant administration.
Methods:
One and two-year-old rats performed in five-choice sessions extended to 250 trials. Task difficulty was manipulated by either increasing or decreasing the duration of stimulus presentation, and pre-feeding studies were performed to control for effects of the additional food earned. In the two-year-old group dose-responses were then derived for nicotine (0.1-0.4 mg/kg), amphetamine (0.05-0.4 mg/kg) and caffeine (3-10 mg/kg).
Results:
Extending five-choice sessions revealed a decline in the performance of two-year-old rats as a function of trial number. Increasing task difficulty induced a response-decrement in one-year old rats; whilst reducing it enhanced the performance of two-year-old rats to that observed in younger subjects. Pre-feeding did not alter the response patterns observed in either group. Nicotine, amphetamine, and caffeine all reversed the performance decrement observed.
Conclusions:
These results demonstrate that similar performance characteristics can be observed in both human and rat, serving to validate further the 5-CSRTT as a measure of sustained attention.
