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The Visual Acuity of Rats in Touchscreen Setups
Els Crijns1,2, Hans Op de Beeck1,2
1Laboratory for Biological Psychology, Department of Brain and Cognition, KU Leuven, Tiensestraat 102 box 3714, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
Vision (Basel, Switzerland)
|January 8, 2020
Summary
Long Evans rats can reliably discriminate visual orientation on touchscreen setups up to 44 cycles per screen. This finding helps standardize stimuli for rodent vision research using automated platforms.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Animal Behavior
Background:
- Touchscreen platforms are increasingly utilized for rodent cognitive tasks, offering automation and high throughput for vision research.
- Limited data exists on decision distance and stimulus size limitations in these setups, hindering precise control of visual properties.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine the maximal cycles per screen for reliable orientation discrimination in Long Evans rats using touchscreen setups.
- To estimate the decision distance in touchscreen platforms and relate it to established visual acuity literature.
Main Methods:
- Long Evans rats were trained on an orientation discrimination task using visual gratings presented on a touchscreen.
- Performance accuracy was measured against varying cycles per screen to identify discrimination limits.
Main Results:
- Rats achieved 70% accuracy in discriminating orientations up to 44 cycles per screen.
- This performance level approximates a visual acuity of 1 cycle per degree at a viewing distance of 12.5 cm.
Conclusions:
- The maximal cycles per screen for reliable orientation discrimination in rats is 44.
- These findings provide a crucial reference for designing visual stimuli in touchscreen paradigms, enabling better comparison with prior studies.
