Evaluation of study design variables and their impact on food-maintained operant responding in mice.

ABSTRACT: Operant conditioning paradigms are useful for studying factors involved in reward, particularly when combined with the tools of genetic manipulation in mice. Published operant studies involving mice vary widely with respect to design, and insight into the consequences of design choices on performance in mice is limited. Here, we evaluated the impact of five design variables on the performance of inbred male mice in operant tasks involving solid food pellets as reinforcing agents. We found that the use of lever-press or nose-poke during FR1 sessions did not impact the performance of C57BL/6 mice, but that the lever-press approach correlated with enhanced performance during PR testing. While FR1 session duration had a notable impact on the rate of acquisition of food-maintained responding, p

SUBMITTER: Haluk DM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2814880 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature