Assessing Cognitive Flexibility in Mice Using a Custom-Built Touchscreen Chamber

Rui Carlos Pais ^1* Ali Goldani ¹ Jayden Hutchison ¹ Amirhossein Mazrouei ¹ Mostafa Khavaninzadeh ^1* Leonardo Molina ² Rob Sutherland ¹ Majid Mohajerani ^1,3*

• ¹ University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Canada
• ² Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
• ³ Douglas Hospital Research Centre, Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University, Montréal, Quebec, Canada

Automated touchscreen systems have become increasingly prevalent in rodent model screening. This technology has significantly enhanced cognitive and behavioural assessments in mice and has bridged the translational gap between basic research using rodent models and human clinical research. Our study introduces a custom-built touchscreen operant conditioning chamber powered by a Raspberry Pi and a commercially available computer tablet, which effectively addresses the significant cost barriers traditionally associated with this technology. In order to test our prototype, we decided to train C57BL/6 mice on a visual discrimination serialreversal task, and both C57BL/6 and App NL-G-F strain -an Alzheimer's Disease (AD) mouse model -on a new location discrimination serial-reversal task. The results demonstrated a clear progression towards asymptotic performance, particularly in the location discrimination task, which also revealed potential genotype-specific deficits, with App NL-G-F mice displaying an increase in the average number of errors in the first reversal as well as in perseverative errors, compared to wild-type mice. These results validate the practical utility of our touchscreen apparatus and underline its potential to provide insights into the behavioural and cognitive markers of neurobiological disorders.