ArticleCognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience2012
A glass full of optimism: enrichment effects on cognitive bias in a rat model of depression.
Article in Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 51 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
51 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 121 citations in OpenAlex.
- Conventional laboratory housing increases morbidity and mortality in research rodents: results of a meta-analysis.BMC biology · 2022Pooled it
- Cognitive Bias Under Adverse and Rewarding Conditions: A Systematic Review of Rodent Studies.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2020Pooled it
- Effects of enrichment removal on cognitive judgement bias of mice: a comparison of two paradigms.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2026Article
- Balancing consistency and flexibility: exploring trait and state optimism in rats using the cognitive judgement bias test.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2026Article
- The influence of regularly changing enrichment on the cognitive judgement bias of laboratory rats.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Optimism and pessimism: a concept for behavioural ecology.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Psilocybin increases optimistic engagement over time: computational modelling of behaviour in rats.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- A repeated measures cognitive affective bias test in rats: comparison with forced swim test.Psychopharmacology · 2023Article
- Structural environmental enrichment and the way it is offered influence cognitive judgement bias and anxiety-like behaviours in zebrafish.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Use of qualitative behavioural assessment to investigate affective states of housed dairy cows under different environmental conditions.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2023Article
- Enriched environment-induced neuroplasticity in ischemic stroke and its underlying mechanisms.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2023Review
- Cognitive bias in animal behavior science: a philosophical perspective.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- Sex and age differences in cognitive bias and neural activation in response to cognitive bias testing.Neurobiology of stress · 2022Article
- Transcriptional profiles in the mouse amygdala after a cognitive judgment bias test largely depend on the genotype.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2022Article
- Development of an IntelliCage-based cognitive bias test for mice.Open research Europe · 2022Article
- Space, time, and context drive anticipatory behavior: Considerations for understanding the behavior of animals in human care.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2022Review
- Application of Cognitive Bias Testing in Neuropsychiatric Disorders: A Mini-Review Based on Animal Studies.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2022Review
- Social Buffering as a Tool for Improving Rodent Welfare.Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science : JAALAS · 2022Article
- Dogs are more pessimistic if their owners use two or more aversive training methods.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- More exploratory house mice judge an ambiguous situation more negatively.Animal cognition · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Investigations of cognitive biases in animals are conceptually and translationally valuable because they contribute to animal welfare research and help to extend and refine our understanding of human emotional disorders, where biased information processing is a critical causal and maintenance factor. We employed the "learned helplessness" genetic rat model of depression in studying cognitive bias and its modification by environmental manipulations. Using a spatial judgment task, responses to ambiguous spatial cues were assessed before and after environmental enrichment to test whether this manipulation would cause an optimistic shift in emotional state. Twenty-four congenitally helpless and nonhelpless male rats were trained to discriminate two different locations, "rewarded" versus "aversive." After successful acquisition of this spatial discrimination, cognitive bias was probed by measuring responses to three ambiguous locations. Latencies to "reach" and to actively "choose" a goal pot were recorded alongside exploratory behaviors. An overall strain difference was observed, with helpless rats displaying longer "reach" latencies than nonhelpless rats. This implies a "pessimistic" response bias in helpless rats, underscoring their depressive-like phenotype. No strain differences were observed regarding other behavioral measures. Half of the animals were then transferred to enriched cages and retested. Environmental enrichment resulted in reduced "choose" latencies in both rat strains, associating enrichment with more optimistic interpretations of ambiguous cues. Our results emphasize the suitability of cognitive bias measurement for animal emotion assessment. They extend the methodological repertoire for characterizing complex phenotypes and bear implications for animal welfare research and for the use of animal models in preclinical research.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.