Name: the 5-choice serial reaction time task: a task of attention and impulse control for rodents
Uploaded: 2014-08-10T15:00:00
Description: Watch this Scientific Journal Video about The 5-Choice Serial Reaction Time Task: A Task of Attention and Impulse Control for Rodents at JoVE.com

This work was supported by a National Institutes of Health grant awarded to TAP (R15MH098246).

This procedure requires the use of animals; these procedures were approved by the Oberlin College Institutional Animal Care and Use committee and are in accordance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals46.
1. 5CSRTT Apparatus
<ol>
	<li>A schematic of the 5CSRTT apparatus is provided in Figure 1.
	<ol>
		<li>The 5CSRTT apparatus consists of an operant conditioning chamber (30.5 x&#160;24.1 x&#160;29.2 cm) with 2 Plexiglas sidewalls, and a stainle...

The 5CSRTT is a widely used task to assess attention and impulse control in rodents. Attention is most commonly measured by accuracy of responding1,7,10. Because accuracy of responding does not include omissions and because both correct and incorrect responses have the same response requirement (i.e., a nose poke in an aperture), accuracy is not influenced by locomotor ability, motivation or sedation. The % omissions can also be used as a measure of attention because well trained rodents will...

The 5-choice serial reaction time task (5CSRTT) was developed by Trevor Robbins and colleagues at the University of Cambridge in order to understand the behavioral deficits displayed by people diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)1,2. It is based upon continuous performance tasks used to study attention in humans3; with attention being defined as the ability to allocate and sustain the focus of cognitive resources on specific stimuli or information while ignoring other information4. Although the task was originally designed for use with rats1,2, a mouse version has also been developed5,6.
The basic 5CSRTT requires rats to scan a horizontal array of five apertures for the presentation of a brief light stimulus (cue) in one of the apertures; once the rat detects the stimulus it must nose poke in the illuminated aperture to receive a sugar pellet reward. Thus, the task requires rats to both divide their attention across the 5 spatially distinct apertures and to sustain attention until the stimulus is presented in a given trial and across multiple trials in a session1,7. Attention is typically assessed by the accuracy of responses. Although the 5CSRTT was originally designed to assess attention, it is also used to assess impulsive behavior or response inhibition1,7,8: the ability to withhold pre-potent or inappropriate responding9. During the task, rats must withhold responding for the duration of the inter trial interval (ITI) and only respond once the stimulus is presented in one of the apertures1. Thus premature responses, those occurring during the ITI prior to stimulus presentation, provide a useful index of impulsive behavior.
The 5CSRTT is an incredibly flexible task&#8212;there are a number of modifications of the basic task (i.e., test day challenges) that can be implemented to more carefully examine how experimental manipulations affect behavior. For example, decreasing the stimulus duration or shortening the ITI are different mechanisms to increase the attentional load of the task and can be used to systematically assess subdomains of attention1,7,10-12. In contrast, increasing the stimulus duration minimizes the attentional demands of the task; this can be used to determine if a manipulation interferes with the ability to execute the basic response requirements of the task12. Increasing the duration of the ITI can be used to determine whether a particular manipulation affects impulsive responding1,7,8,13-15. Moreover, using test day challenges, such as those just described, can reveal deficits10 or enhancements16,17 of behavior that are not apparent in well trained rats tested using standard testing parameters.
Importantly, the 5CSRTT is amenable to combination with a number of different techniques; for example cognition has been investigated following lesions of discrete brain areas10,18-20, or selective neurotransmitter depletions2,21,22. Behavioral pharmacological investigations have used either systemic16,17,23-28 or discrete intracranial administration of drugs29-32. Moreover performance is easily assessed after acute12,16,17,29-32 and chronic drug administration13,14,23,33. The effects of task performance on neurotransmitter release34 and metabolic activity35 in discrete brain areas have also been assessed. In addition, performance on the task can be used to separate rats into groups based on baseline attentional performance30,31 or levels of impulsivity15,32. Finally, with the advent of a mouse version of the 5CSRTT5,6, the task has been used to investigate the genetic contributions to attention and impulse control5,36-39.

Because the 5CSRTT assesses multiple cognitive functions simultaneously and is amenable to use in combination of a variety of pharmacological, molecular and genetic approaches it has been routinely used to assess cognitive dysfunction in the context of animal models of psychiatric and neurological disorders. For example, the 5CSRTT has been used to investigate the neurobiology underlying the cognitive disruptions in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)37,40,41, schizophrenia23,33,42, drug addiction13,14,43-45, Alzheimer&#8217;s disease18,39, Parkinson&#8217;s disease36, and Huntington&#8217;s disease37.

This protocol provides guidelines for training rats on the 5CSRTT. Because a number of performance measures can be collected, we describe how common patterns of results should be interpreted. In addition several common modifications to the basic protocol, the test day challenges, are described.

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="960">
	<tbody>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:192px;">Five Hole Nose Poke Wall Chamber Package</td>
			<td style="width:192px;">Med-Associates</td>
			<td style="width:192px;">MED-NP5L-D1</td>
			<td style="width:192px;">Alternatively one could use the standard package (Catalog #:MED-NP5L-B1) 
			Deluxe</td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;">Dustless Precision Pellet</td>
			<td>Bio-Serv</td>
			<td>F0021</td>
			<td>45 mg Purified</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

the 5-choice serial reaction time task: a task of attention and impulse control for rodents

This protocol describes the 5-choice serial reaction time task, which is an operant based task used to study attention and impulse control in rodents. Test day challenges, modifications to the standard task, can be used to systematically tax the neural systems controlling either attention or impulse control. Importantly, these challenges have consistent effects on behavior across laboratories in intact animals and can reveal either enhancements or deficits in cognitive function that are not apparent when rats are only tested on the standard task. The variety of behavioral measures that are collected can be used to determine if other factors (i.e., sedation, motivation deficits, locomotor impairments) are contributing to changes in performance. The versatility of the 5CSRTT is further enhanced because it is amenable to combination with pharmacological, molecular, and genetic techniques.

Manipulations of the 5CSRTT that Probe Visuospatial Attention 
One approach to varying the attentional demands of the task is to alter the duration of the stimulus. As the stimulus duration decreases, % accuracy decreases (Figure 3A) and % omissions increase (Figure 3B; adapted from 12). Thus shorter stimulus durations increase the attentional demands of the task and longer stimulus durations decrease the attentional demands of the task. Chang...

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about The 5-Choice Serial Reaction Time Task: A Task of Attention and Impulse Control for Rodents at JoVE.com

The 5-Choice Serial Reaction Time Task: A Task of Attention and Impulse Control for Rodents

This protocol describes the 5-choice serial reaction time task, which is an operant based task used to study attention and impulse control in rodents. Test day challenges, which are modifications of the standard task, increase flexibility of the task and can be combined with other manipulations to more fully characterize behavior.

This protocol describes the 5-choice serial reaction time task, which is an operant based task used to study attention and impulse control in rodents. ...

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