Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, SAPIENZA, University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185, Rome, Italy.
PhD Program in Behavioral Neuroscience, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2021 Jan 29;11(1):2700. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-82021-w.
In neurophysiology, nonhuman primates represent an important model for studying the brain. Typically, monkeys are moved from their home cage to an experimental room daily, where they sit in a primate chair and interact with electronic devices. Refining this procedure would make the researchers' work easier and improve the animals' welfare. To address this issue, we used home-cage training to train two macaque monkeys in a non-match-to-goal task, where each trial required a switch from the choice made in the previous trial to obtain a reward. The monkeys were tested in two versions of the task, one in which they acted as the agent in every trial and one in which some trials were completed by a "ghost agent". We evaluated their involvement in terms of their performance and their interaction with the apparatus. Both monkeys were able to maintain a constant involvement in the task with good, stable performance within sessions in both versions of the task. Our study confirms the feasibility of home-cage training and demonstrates that even with challenging tasks, monkeys can complete a large number of trials at a high performance level, which is a prerequisite for electrophysiological studies of monkey behavior.
在神经生理学中，非人类灵长类动物是研究大脑的重要模型。通常，猴子每天从它们的家笼被转移到实验室内，在那里它们坐在灵长类动物椅子上，与电子设备互动。改进这个程序将使研究人员的工作更容易，并提高动物的福利。为了解决这个问题，我们使用笼内训练来训练两只猕猴在非匹配到目标任务中，在这个任务中，每次试验需要从前一次试验中做出的选择转变，以获得奖励。猴子们在两种任务版本中进行了测试，一种是在每个试验中它们作为代理，另一种是在一些试验中由“幽灵代理”完成。我们根据它们的表现和与设备的交互来评估它们的参与程度。两只猴子都能够在两种任务版本中保持恒定的参与度，表现良好，稳定。我们的研究证实了笼内训练的可行性，并表明，即使是具有挑战性的任务，猴子也可以在高绩效水平下完成大量的试验，这是猴子行为电生理研究的前提。
