ArticlePsychopharmacology2018
Validation and optimisation of a touchscreen progressive ratio test of motivation in male rats.
Article in Psychopharmacology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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
11 citing papers in PubMed, 26 citations in OpenAlex.
- Training Schedule Affects Operant Responding Independent of Motivation in the Neuroligin-3 R451C Mouse Model of Autism.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2025Article
- Cross-species translational paradigms for assessing positive valence system as defined by the RDoC matrix.Journal of neurochemistry · 2025Review
- Sex-specific alterations in cognitive control following moderate prenatal alcohol exposure and transient systemic hypoxia ischemia in the rat.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2024Article
- Refining the study of decision-making in animals: differential effects of d-amphetamine and haloperidol in a novel touchscreen-automated Rearing-Effort Discounting (RED) task and the Fixed-Ratio Effort Discounting (FRED) task.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Article
- The projection-specific signals that establish functionally segregated dopaminergic synapses.Cell · 2023Article
- Early-life stress biases responding to negative feedback and increases amygdala volume and vulnerability to later-life stress.Translational psychiatry · 2023Article
- Design and evaluation of a touchscreen apparatus for operant research with pigeons.Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior · 2021Article
- Using touchscreen-delivered cognitive assessments to address the principles of the 3Rs in behavioral sciences.Lab animal · 2021Review
- Deficits across multiple behavioral domains align with susceptibility to stress in 129S1/SvImJ mice.Neurobiology of stress · 2020Article
- Blockade of muscarinic acetylcholine receptors facilitates motivated behaviour and rescues a model of antipsychotic-induced amotivation.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2019Article
- Assessment of mGluR5 KO mice under conditions of low stress using a rodent touchscreen apparatus reveals impaired behavioural flexibility driven by perseverative responses.Molecular brain · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
rationaleAcross species, effort-related motivation can be assessed by testing behaviour under a progressive ratio (PR) schedule of reinforcement. However, to date, PR tasks for rodents have been available using traditional operant response systems only.
objectivesTouchscreen operant response systems allow the assessment of behaviour in laboratory rodents, using tasks that share high face validity with the computerised assessments used in humans. Here, we sought to optimise a rat touchscreen variant of PR and validate it by assessing the effects of a number of manipulations known to affect PR performance in non-touchscreen paradigms.
methodsSeparate groups of male Sprague-Dawley rats were trained on PR schedules with either linear (PR4) or exponential (PREXP) schedules of reinforcement. PR performance was assessed in response to manipulations in reward outcome. Animals were tested under conditions of increased reward magnitude and following reward devaluation through a prefeeding procedure. Subsequently, the effects of systemic administration of the dopamine D2/D3 receptor antagonist raclopride and the psychostimulant d-amphetamine were examined as traditional pharmacological methods for manipulating motivation.
resultsRats reinforced under PR4 and PREXP schedules consistently showed differential patterns of response rates within sessions. Furthermore, both PR4 and PREXP schedules were sensitive to suppression by prefeeding or raclopride administration. Performance under both schedules was facilitated by increasing reward magnitude or d-amphetamine administration.
conclusionsTaken together, these findings mirror those observed in lever-based PR paradigms in rats. This study therefore demonstrates the successful validation of the rat touchscreen PR task. This will allow for the assessment of motivation in rats, within the same touchscreen apparatus used for the assessment of complex cognitive processes in this species.
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.