ArticlePloS one2014
Hope for the best or prepare for the worst? Towards a spatial cognitive bias test for mice.
Article in PloS one, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 41 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cognitive Bias Under Adverse and Rewarding Conditions: A Systematic Review of Rodent Studies.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2020Pooled it
- Review
- Balancing consistency and flexibility: exploring trait and state optimism in rats using the cognitive judgement bias test.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2026Article
- Effects of enrichment removal on cognitive judgement bias of mice: a comparison of two paradigms.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2026Article
- Development of an IntelliCage-based cognitive bias test for mice.Open research Europe · 2022Article
- Application of Cognitive Bias Testing in Neuropsychiatric Disorders: A Mini-Review Based on Animal Studies.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2022Review
- Review
- Knockout serotonin transporter in rats moderates outcome and stimulus generalization.Translational psychiatry · 2021Article
- Effects of different social experiences on emotional state in mice.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Behavioral Methods for Severity Assessment.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2020Review
- Impulse for animal welfare outside the experiment.Laboratory animals · 2020Article
- Assessing Affective State in Laboratory Rodents to Promote Animal Welfare-What Is the Progress in Applied Refinement Research?Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2019Review
- Assessing and Enhancing the Welfare of Animals with Equivocal and Reliable Cues.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2019Article
- Measuring affect-related cognitive bias: Do mice in opposite affective states react differently to negative and positive stimuli?PloS one · 2019Article
- Differential Effects of Serotonin Transporter Genotype on Anxiety-Like Behavior and Cognitive Judgment Bias in Mice.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2019Article
- A cross-species judgement bias task: integrating active trial initiation into a spatial Go/No-go task.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Pavlovian influences on learning differ between rats and mice in a counter-balanced Go/NoGo judgement bias task.Behavioural brain research · 2017Article
- Mood As Cumulative Expectation Mismatch: A Test of Theory Based on Data from Non-verbal Cognitive Bias Tests.Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
- Assessment of housing density, space allocation and social hierarchy of laboratory rats on behavioural measures of welfare.PloS one · 2017Article
- Making Decisions under Ambiguity: Judgment Bias Tasks for Assessing Emotional State in Animals.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2016Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cognitive bias, the altered information processing resulting from the background emotional state of an individual, has been suggested as a promising new indicator of animal emotion. Comparable to anxious or depressed humans, animals in a putatively negative emotional state are more likely to judge an ambiguous stimulus as if it predicts a negative event, than those in positive states. The present study aimed to establish a cognitive bias test for mice based on a spatial judgment task and to apply it in a pilot study to serotonin transporter (5-HTT) knockout mice, a well-established mouse model for the study of anxiety- and depression-related behavior. In a first step, we validated that our setup can assess different expectations about the outcome of an ambiguous stimulus: mice having learned to expect something positive within a maze differed significantly in their behavior towards an unfamiliar location than animals having learned to expect something negative. In a second step, the use of spatial location as a discriminatory stimulus was confirmed by showing that mice interpret an ambiguous stimulus depending on its spatial location, with a position exactly midway between a positive and a negative reference point provoking the highest level of ambiguity. Finally, the anxiety- and depression-like phenotype of the 5-HTT knockout mouse model manifested--comparable to human conditions--in a trend for a negatively distorted interpretation of ambiguous information, albeit this effect was not statistically significant. The results suggest that the present cognitive bias test provides a useful basis to study the emotional state in mice, which may not only increase the translational value of animal models in the study of human affective disorders, but which is also a central objective of animal welfare research.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.