Translational approaches to evaluating motivation in laboratory rodents: conventional and touchscreen-based procedures

Using touchscreen-delivered cognitive assessments to address the principles of the 3Rs in behavioral sciences

“…Touchscreen-based assays specifically targeting aspects of emotional state are now available 28,48,167,174 . They represent an opportunity to establish a quantitative approach to cage-side animal welfare monitoring and to characterise best practice approaches to laboratory animal husbandry and care.…”

“…The advent of touchscreen-equipped behavioural equipment for laboratory species has enabled the adaptation and in some cases, the direct translation, of computerised cognitive assessments used in humans such as the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) [42][43][44] and the EMOTICOM battery 45 to key vertebrate model systems. This development has permitted the assessment of cognitive domains such as learning, memory and executive function as well as various aspects of motivation and affective state in laboratory species 46 using an approach that closely mirrors the approach used to evaluate the same constructs in clinical populations 26,47,48 The cross-species translational potential of the touchscreen system can be evidenced by the similarities in paired-associates learning (PAL) task performance observed between mice and humans expressing mutations in the neuropsychiatric disease-related Dlg2 gene 26,49 . Similarly, parallels can be drawn between the performance of the touchscreen PAL task and other touchscreen-based tasks assessing attentional and executive function in patients with Alzheimer's disease and a mouse model of the disease [50][51][52] , and when motivation is evaluated in patients with Huntington's disease and the R6/1 mouse model of this disease 53 .…”

“…Relative Replacement. The rapid development of assays for rodent touchscreen assessment apparatus 48,[64][65][66] has revealed the considerable capabilities of these species. In some research areas, the introduction of this technology could facilitate Relative Replacement, as certain studies that would have previously been performed in NHPs on the basis of their higher phylogenetic position could be performed instead, or at least initially, in rodents.…”

“…Applications for affective state research. The recent development of a series of touchscreen versions of tasks targeting constructs related to mood and emotional state 28,48,96,127,128 has expanded the possible applications of the touchscreen system to new areas of behavioural neuroscience research by providing a powerful complement to the existing cognition-focused assays.…”

Gpr88deletion impacts motivational control independently of striatal dopamine function

“…However, it is unclear if GPR88 is involved in reward valuation and/or effort-based decision making in a sex-dependent manner, and if behavioural changes are due to maladaptations to the dopaminergic system. To address these questions, we probed the motivational phenotype of male and female Gpr88 knockout mice using the rodent touchscreen system, which offers a translational platform to measure cognitive behaviours with better alignment of preclinical and clinical test constructs and outcomes (11,12). We tested the effect of reward devaluation on progressive ratio breakpoint to assess the potential for altered reward valuation in Gpr88 knockout mice.…”