Touchscreen FOR mice and ratS

As for the WCST and Matching To Sample tasks, the Touchscreen allows studying learning and memory processes, especially on rodents. We already developed tactile tasks, some of them including touchscreen, for other species: Humans, Primates, Horses, Hens, Trouts.

Apparatus

The screen fits perfectly in our polymodal cages for rodents, in two versions: with only one lateral panel (left picture) or with separated windows (right side).

The poke on shapes on the screen is permitted by a touchscreen OR by a frame of infrared beams located all around each window.

Software

Our software allows to:

• Determine cognitive tasks to be performed, display automatically generated forms or personalized images (.jpg or .png), set up the time-out periods, numbers of rewards, etc,
• Control others components and accessories of polymodal cages such as levers, drink-water cups, etc,
• Have the follow-up in real time and the recording of all actions performed by the animal..

A software module for results extraction gives the performances of the animal trial by trial, as well as overall performances:

• Correct and incorrect answers,
• Early and late responses,
• Summary of images displayed,
• The reaction times, the kinetics of the reaction times as a function of the configurable time slices,
• But also calculate the number of events made during the experiment depending of different components, times, kinetics of events, events conditioned by another event, etc.

This software displays the results in a Microsoft Excel compatible datasheet.