A Novel Rat Spatial Inference Task Reveals Rapid Deduction of Transitive Relationships Using Schemas and Deliberation

Inferential reasoning is a vital cognitive ability that enables animals to navigate novel situations by leveraging existing relational knowledge of memory schema, with hypothesized roles of prefrontal cortical - hippocampal circuits. Transitive inference (TI) tasks test the ability of subjects to infer relationships within a value hierarchy (e.g., A>B>C>D>E) after being trained only on adjacent premise pairs (e.g., A-B, B-C, etc.). In rodents, current TI paradigms are primarily based on odor-cues and have several limitations that preclude investigation of physiological mechanisms underlying schemas and deliberation. To address these challenges, we developed a novel, automated spatial TI task for rats using a radial maze with maze arms as premise elements and a dedicated deliberation zone. Most rats successfully learned the premise pairs over training. Further, animals demonstrated rapid, successful inference (test pair B>D and control pair A>E) within a single test session, with higher initial accuracy than comparable premise pairs, indicating the use of schema-based inference. We also investigated vicarious trial and error's (VTE), a behavioral correlate of spatial deliberation. VTE behavior was elevated on choice trajectories early in learning, when novel premise pairs were introduced, and generally for incorrect trials, corresponding to the hypothesized association of VTE's with uncertainty. Further, rats also exhibited elevated VTE behavior with high variability during inference testing, with individual variability suggestive of varying strengths of schema usage. Our findings demonstrate the feasibility of a rodent spatial TI task that provides new insights into the behavioral correlates of schemas and deliberation for inferential reasoning.