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A novel multichoice touchscreen paradigm for assessing cognitive flexibility in mice
Patrick T Piantadosi1, Abby G Lieberman1, Charles L Pickens1
1Laboratory of Behavioral and Genomic Neuroscience, National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse (NIAAA), National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20852, USA.
Learning & Memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.)
|December 19, 2018
Summary
This study introduces a new three-choice reversal task to better understand cognitive flexibility. Inhibiting the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) impaired performance, suggesting its role in tracking outcomes.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Animal Behavior
Background:
- Cognitive flexibility allows behavior modification based on changing stimulus-outcome contingencies.
- Reversal learning assesses this flexibility but two-stimulus tasks limit error analysis.
- The lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) are implicated in cognitive flexibility.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate a novel three-choice visual reversal task in mice.
- To investigate the role of the lOFC and dmPFC in cognitive flexibility using this new paradigm.
- To clarify the specific function of the lOFC in reversal learning.
Main Methods:
- Developed a touchscreen-based three-choice visual reversal task for mice.
- Administered acute pharmacological inhibition of the lOFC and dmPFC.
- Analyzed behavioral performance during early reversal phases.
Main Results:
- Male C57BL/6J mice initially persevered with previously rewarded stimuli.
- lOFC inhibition, but not dmPFC inhibition, impaired early reversal performance.
- lOFC inactivation led to increased choice of a never-reinforced stimulus and reduced perseverative responding.
Conclusions:
- The novel three-choice task is a useful tool for studying cognitive flexibility and its neural basis.
- Findings challenge the traditional view of lOFC's role in response inhibition.
- Results support a role for the lOFC in response and outcome tracking during cognitive flexibility tasks.
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