Performance of galanin transgenic mice in the 5-choice serial reaction time attentional task

Measuring impulsivity in mice: the five-choice serial reaction time task

“…As previously described for rats (Dalley et al 2002), mice are able to reach high levels of performance. Indeed, comparing mice and rats, under baseline conditions, the level of premature responding in mice is lower than that seen typically in rats (Humby et al 1999); on the other hand, the omission rate can be higher in mice (Oliver et al 2009;Wrenn et al 2006). This impairment may be associated with different motivational processes among different strains of mice and/ or a more acute decrement in vigilance within the session in mice, compared to rats (Dalley et al 2004), but it may also be related to satiation, a common problem with the procedure in mice (de Bruin et al 2006).…”

“…In Relkovic et al (2010), animals were trained to baseline performance at 0.8 s stimulus duration, but only 30 total trials were required to be completed and criteria of 80% of accuracy and <25% of omissions were established. In contrast, when the assessment of attention was the main priority, the number of trials was set at 50, since overtraining could be a confounding factor (Wrenn et al 2006): attention rather than the ability to learn is being assessed. However, daily sessions of 30 min duration or limited to 100 trials (whichever comes first) are the most commonly used (Greco et al 2005;Patel et al 2006).…”

“…Some studies perform the timeout punishment less rigorously, using a 2-s period (e.g. Greco and Carli 2006;Hoyle et al 2006;Pozzi et al 2010), whereas others use 4 s (Kerr et al 2004;Young et al 2004) or even 10 s (Romberg et al 2011;Wrenn et al 2006); 5 s is the most common timeout interval used (e.g. Bailey et al 2010;Davies et al 2007;Humby et al 1999;Lambourne et al 2007;Loos et al 2009;Oliver et al 2009;Pattij et al 2007;Relkovic et al 2010;Yan et al 2011).…”

“…The timeout might be signalled by a period of darkness (e.g. Hoyle et al 2006;Oliver et al 2009;Walker et al 2011) or might be signalled by the illumination of the house light (Davies et al 2007;Humby et al 1999;Kerr et al 2004;Lambourne et al 2007;Wrenn et al 2006;Young et al 2004). Responses in the holes during the timeout period may restart the timeout (Greco and Carli 2006).…”

“…This impairment may be associated with different motivational processes among different strains of mice and/ or a more acute decrement in vigilance within the session in mice, compared to rats (Dalley et al 2004), but it may also be related to satiation, a common problem with the procedure in mice (de Bruin et al 2006). For this reason, the murine version sometimes consists of shorter sessions than are typically used with rats (Wrenn et al 2006).…”