Build instructions for a long term behavioural enclosure for measuring motivational switching in mice

Abstract

Switching between motivated behaviours, such as feeding, drinking and socializing, is important for survival in a dynamic, social environment. Inflexible repetitive behaviours are a hallmark of many neuropsychiatric disorders. Studies of the neural mechanisms underlying motivated behaviours, i.e., drives, seldom focus on switching between them. This is partly due to a lack of appropriate behavioural measurement systems. In this study, we build and test a device for measuring motivational switching in mice, the Switchmaze. We present build instructions using affordable off-the-shelf components, and openly accessible acquisition and analysis scripts.

Switchmaze: automated, ongoing measurement of motivation and drive switching in mice

“…Build instructions for the Switchmaze, a bill of materials and code are available in the accompanying manuscript 15 . The apparatus (Figure 1A,B) discretizes behavioural cycles of feeding and drinking, which animals perform one at a time in a foraging environment separated from the home cage by a single-entry module.…”

“…However, navigating a familiar walled environment is natural for mice 13,14 . Therefore, we set up a naturalistic sequential foraging task which discretizes motivational switching -the Switchmaze 15 . We quantify motivational switching with a behavioural metric derived from the ratio of single probe entries to continuous exploitation runs, termed motivation switching.…”

The Switchmaze: an open-design device for measuring motivation and drive switching in mice

“…Instead, navigating a familiar walled environment is natural for mice 15,16 . Therefore, we set up a naturalistic sequential foraging task which discretizes motivational switching – the Switchmaze 17 . We quantify motivational switching with a behavioural metric derived from the ratio of single probe entries to continuous exploitation runs, termed motivation switching rate (MSR) .…”