Cristino Mark H, Mitchell Alexander C, Preibisz-Kamat Maya, Fletcher Peyton Shea, Spellman Timothy J
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Connecticut, Glenbrook, Storrs, Connecticut 06269.
Department of Neuroscience, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, Connecticut 06030.
eNeuro. 2025 Jan 29;12(1). doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0364-24.2024. Print 2025 Jan.
The study of the neural circuitry underlying complex mammalian decision-making, particularly cognitive flexibility, is critical for understanding psychiatric disorders. To test cognitive flexibility, as well as potentially other decision-making paradigms involving multimodal sensory perception, we developed FlexRig, an open-source, modular behavioral platform for use in head-fixed mice. FlexRig enables the administration of tasks relying upon olfactory, somatosensory, and/or auditory cues and employing left and right licking as a behavior readout and reward delivery mechanism. The platform includes hardware and software components that are customizable, scalable, and portable, supporting a variety of behavioral assays. Using FlexRig, we established a head-fixed task to model attentional set-shifting, offering a new tool for neuroscience research that enhances the capacity for investigation of cognitive processes and their neural substrates, with broad applications in translational neuroscience.
对复杂哺乳动物决策（尤其是认知灵活性）背后的神经回路进行研究，对于理解精神疾病至关重要。为了测试认知灵活性以及可能涉及多模态感官感知的其他决策范式，我们开发了FlexRig，这是一个用于头部固定小鼠的开源模块化行为平台。FlexRig能够执行依赖嗅觉、体感和/或听觉线索的任务，并采用左右舔舐作为行为读数和奖励传递机制。该平台包括可定制、可扩展和便携的硬件和软件组件，支持各种行为分析。使用FlexRig，我们建立了一个头部固定任务来模拟注意力转换，为神经科学研究提供了一种新工具，增强了对认知过程及其神经基础的研究能力，在转化神经科学中有广泛应用。
