Johnson Aaron M, Lenell Charles, Severa Elizabeth, Rudisch Denis Michael, Morrison Robert A, Shembel Adrianna C
Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States.
Department of Surgery, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2022 Mar 4;16:826550. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2022.826550. eCollection 2022.
Rats produce ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) for conspecific communication. These USVs are valuable biomarkers for studying behavioral and mechanistic changes in a variety of diseases and disorders. Previous work has demonstrated operant conditioning can progressively increase the number of USVs produced by rats over multiple weeks. This operant conditioning paradigm is a useful model for investigating the effects of increased laryngeal muscle use on USV acoustic characteristics and underlying central and peripheral laryngeal sensorimotor mechanisms. Previous USV operant conditioning studies relied on manual training to elicit USV productions, which is both time and labor intensive and can introduce human variability. This manuscript introduces a semi-automated method for training rats to increase their rate of USV production by pairing commercially available operant conditioning equipment with an ultrasonic detection system. USV training requires three basic components: elicitation cue, detection of the behavior, and a reward to reinforce the desired behavior. With the semi-automated training paradigm, indirect exposure to the opposite sex or an olfactory cue can be used to elicit USV production. The elicited USV is then automatically detected by the ultrasonic acoustic system, which consequently triggers the release of a sucrose pellet reward. Our results demonstrate this semi-automated procedure produces a similar increase in USV production as the manual training method. Through automation of USV detection and reward administration, staffing requirements, human error, and subject behavioral variability may be minimized while scalability and reproducibility are increased. This automation may also result in greater experimental flexibility, allowing USV training paradigms to become more customizable for a wider array of applications. This semi-automated USV behavioral training paradigm improves upon manual training techniques by increasing the ease, speed, and quality of data collection.
大鼠会发出超声波发声（USV）用于同种间交流。这些USV是研究各种疾病和病症中行为及机制变化的有价值生物标志物。先前的研究表明，操作性条件反射可在数周内逐渐增加大鼠发出的USV数量。这种操作性条件反射范式是研究增加喉部肌肉使用对USV声学特征以及潜在的中枢和外周喉部感觉运动机制影响的有用模型。先前的USV操作性条件反射研究依赖于手动训练来引发USV发声，这既耗时又费力，还可能引入人为差异。本文介绍了一种半自动方法，通过将市售的操作性条件反射设备与超声波检测系统配对，训练大鼠提高其USV发声率。USV训练需要三个基本组成部分：引发线索、行为检测和奖励以强化期望行为。采用半自动训练范式时，间接接触异性或嗅觉线索可用于引发USV发声。然后，超声波声学系统会自动检测引发的USV，从而触发释放蔗糖颗粒奖励。我们的结果表明，这种半自动程序在USV发声增加方面与手动训练方法相似。通过USV检测和奖励给予的自动化，人员需求、人为误差和受试者行为差异可降至最低，同时可扩展性和可重复性得以提高。这种自动化还可能带来更大的实验灵活性，使USV训练范式能够针对更广泛的应用进行更定制化设置。这种半自动USV行为训练范式通过提高数据收集的简便性、速度和质量，改进了手动训练技术。
