Laboratory of Biological Psychology, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
Curr Biol. 2012 Jan 10;22(1):50-5. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.041. Epub 2011 Dec 29.
Although rodents are the first-choice animal model in the life sciences, they are rarely used to study higher visual functions. It is unclear to what extent rodents follow complex visual strategies to solve visual object recognition and discrimination tasks [1-5]. We report the performance of rats in a visual discrimination task applying the multivariate "Bubbles" paradigm previously used in highly visual species such as humans, monkeys, and pigeons [6-8]. We demonstrate a relationship between accuracy and local occlusion of stimuli by bubbles, as such revealing the strategies or "templates" that underlie visual discrimination behavior. Performance was guided by relatively simple, screen-centered templates as well as more adaptive templates reflecting context dependency and tolerance for changes in stimulus position. These findings demonstrate the complexity of visual strategies followed by rats and reveal interesting similarities (e.g., potential for position tolerance) as well as differences (overall efficiency of visual processing) compared to primates. In conclusion, this study illustrates the feasibility of investigating visual cognition in rats with multivariate behavioral paradigms, with the ultimate aim to use a comparative approach to explore the anatomical and neurophysiological basis of vision, also for those visual abilities that are traditionally studied in humans and monkeys.
尽管啮齿动物是生命科学中首选的动物模型，但它们很少被用于研究更高的视觉功能。目前还不清楚啮齿动物在多大程度上遵循复杂的视觉策略来解决视觉物体识别和辨别任务[1-5]。我们报告了大鼠在视觉辨别任务中的表现，该任务应用了先前在人类、猴子和鸽子等高视觉物种中使用的多元“气泡”范式[6-8]。我们通过气泡的局部遮挡揭示了刺激的关系，从而揭示了视觉辨别行为的策略或“模板”。性能由相对简单的屏幕中心模板以及更适应的模板指导，这些模板反映了上下文依赖性和对刺激位置变化的容忍度。这些发现表明大鼠采用的视觉策略的复杂性，并揭示了与灵长类动物相比有趣的相似之处（例如，位置容忍的潜力）和差异（视觉处理的整体效率）。总之，这项研究说明了使用多元行为范式研究大鼠视觉认知的可行性，最终目的是采用比较方法探索视觉的解剖学和神经生理学基础，也包括那些在人类和猴子中传统研究的视觉能力。
