A Tale of Two Rats: The Backstory of a Clever Cartoon.

A well-known cartoon among psychologists and behavior analysts depicts two rats in a Skinner box, leaning over a response lever as one says to the other, "Boy, do we have this guy conditioned, every time I press the bar down he drops a pellet in." Anyone who has ever conducted an experiment, worked with a client, or taught someone can relate to the cartoon's message of reciprocal control between subject and experimenter, client and therapist, and teacher and student. This is the tale of that cartoon and its impact. It begins mid-20th-century at Columbia University, then a hotbed of behavioral psychology, which bears an intimate connection to the cartoon's appearance. The tale expands from Columbia to follow the lives of its creators from their undergraduate days there to their deaths decades later. The infusion of the cartoon into American psychology begins with B. F. Skinner, but, over the years, it also has appeared in introductory psychology textbooks and in iterative form in mass media outlets such as the World Wide Web and magazines like The New Yorker. The heart of the tale, however, was stated in the second sentence of this abstract. The tale ends with a review of how reciprocal relations like those depicted by the cartoon's creators have influenced research and practice in behavioral psychology.

Protocols for the Evaluation of Neurodevelopmental Alterations in Rabbit Models In Vitro and In Vivo.

The rabbit model is gaining importance in the field of neurodevelopmental evaluation due to its higher similarity to humans in terms of brain development and maturation than rodents. In this publication, we detailed 14 protocols covering toxicological relevant endpoints for the assessment of neurodevelopmental adverse effects in the rabbit species. These protocols include both in vitro and in vivo techniques, which also cover different evaluation time-points, the neonatal period, and long-term examinations at postnatal days (PNDs) 50-70. Specifically, the protocols (P) included are as follows: neurosphere preparation (GD30/PND0; P2) and neurosphere assay (P3), behavioral ontogeny (PND1; P4), brain obtaining and brain weight measurement at two different ages: PND1 (P5) and PND70 (P12), neurohistopathological evaluations after immersion fixation for neurons, astrocytes, oligodendrocytes and microglia (PND1; P6-9) or perfusion fixation (PND70; P12), motor activity (P11, open field), memory and sensory function (P11, object recognition test), learning (P10, Skinner box), and histological evaluation of plasticity (P13 and P14) through dendritic spines and perineuronal nets. The expected control values and their variabilities are presented together with the information on how to troubleshoot the most common issues related to each protocol. To sum up, this publication offers a comprehensive compilation of reliable protocols adapted to the rabbit model for neurodevelopmental assessment in toxicology.

Automated Operant Conditioning Devices for Fish. Do They Work?

The growing use of teleosts in comparative cognition and in neurobiological research has prompted many researchers to develop automated conditioning devices for fish. These techniques can make research less expensive and fully comparable with research on warm-blooded species, in which automated devices have been used for more than a century. Tested with a recently developed automated device, guppies (Poecilia reticulata) easily performed 80 reinforced trials per session, exceeding 80% accuracy in color or shape discrimination tasks after only 3-4 training session, though they exhibit unexpectedly poor performance in numerical discrimination tasks. As several pieces of evidence indicate, guppies possess excellent numerical abilities. In the first part of this study, we benchmarked the automated training device with a standard manual training procedure by administering the same set of tasks, which consisted of numerical discriminations of increasing difficulty. All manually-trained guppies quickly learned the easiest discriminations and a substantial percentage learned the more difficult ones, such as 4 vs. 5 items. No fish trained with the automated conditioning device reached the learning criterion for even the easiest discriminations. In the second part of the study, we introduced a series of modifications to the conditioning chamber and to the procedure in an attempt to improve its efficiency. Increasing the decision time, inter-trial interval, or visibility of the stimuli did not produce an appreciable improvement. Reducing the cognitive load of the task by training subjects first to use the device with shape and color discriminations, significantly improved their numerical performance. Allowing the subjects to reside in the test chamber, which likely reduced the amount of attentional resources subtracted to task execution, also led to an improvement, although in no case did subjects match the performance of fish trained with the standard procedure. Our results highlight limitations in the capacity of small laboratory teleosts to cope with operant conditioning automation that was not observed in laboratory mammals and birds and that currently prevent an easy and straightforward comparison with other vertebrates.

SPiDbox: design and validation of an open-source "Skinner-box" system for the study of jumping spiders.

BACKGROUND: Skinner-box systems are fundamental in behavioural research. They are objective, reliable and can be used to carry out procedures otherwise impossible with manual methodologies. Recently, jumping spiders have caught the interest of scientists for their remarkable cognitive abilities. However, inquiries on their learning abilities are still few, since we lacked a proper methodology capable of overcoming the inherent difficulties that this family poses when carrying out a conditioning protocol. NEW METHOD: In this paper, a new, automated, open-source Skinner-box, intended for the study of jumping spiders is presented. The system is 3d printable, cheap, fully open-source; is controlled with a Raspberry Pi Zero by a Python script. Since spiders are too lightweight to activate large physical object, the SPiDbox employs photo-sensors. RESULTS: To validate the methodology, 30 Phidippus regius underwent a training procedure for a simple discrimination task to validate the effectiveness of the system. The spiders managed to learn the task, establishing the effectiveness of the SPiDbox. COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHODS: This automated training appears to be more reliable and effective than traditional methodologies. Moreover, its highly scalable, as many SPiDboxes could be used in parallel. CONCLUSIONS: The SPiDbox appears to be an effective system to train jumping spiders, opening up the possibility to study learning in increasingly more complex tasks, possibly extending our understanding of jumping spiders' cognitive abilities.

Establishment of a rodent cooperation assay as a model of social cognition.

INTRODUCTION: Impaired cooperative skills form a characteristic symptom in autism, which lacks adequate treatment. The objective of this study was to establish a rat cooperation assay which fits the feasibility and capacity requirements of drug development. METHODS: Long-Evans and Lister Hooded rats were trained in pairs to simultaneously perform nose-pokes (within 1 s) for reward in a Skinner box equipped with two nose-poke modules. Conditioning took place first with naive-naive pairs, then with naive-experienced and finally with experienced-experienced pairs, when the task was familiar for both rats. In a control experiment, experienced Lister-hooded pairs were tested under the learnt schedule but without the possibility to communicate with each other. RESULTS: Rats were able to learn the task in 8-15 sessions. Experienced-experienced Long-Evans pairs completed the training significantly faster than the other pairs Analysis of the nose-poke latency data, sample video-recordings and the significantly decreased performance of rats in the control experiment suggested that the animals solved the task via real cooperation. DISCUSSION: The newly developed rat cooperation model is quick and has sufficiently high throughput, therefore it may be used in the drug development of putative social cognitive enhancer compounds.

Automated Operant Assessments of Huntington's Disease Mouse Models.

Huntington's disease (HD) presents clinically with a triad of motor, cognitive, and psychiatric symptoms. Cognitive symptoms often occur early within the disease progression, prior to the onset of motor symptoms, and they are significantly burdensome to people who are affected by HD. In order to determine the suitability of mouse models of HD in recapitulating the human condition, these models must be behaviorally tested and characterized. Operant behavioral testing offers an automated and objective method of behaviorally profiling motor, cognitive, and psychiatric dysfunction in HD mice. Furthermore, operant testing can also be employed to determine any behavioral changes observed after any associated interventions or experimental therapeutics. We here present an overview of the most commonly used operant behavioral tests to dissociate motor, cognitive, and psychiatric aspects of mouse models of HD.

Drosophila learn efficient paths to a food source.

Elucidating the genetic, and neuronal bases for learned behavior is a central problem in neuroscience. A leading system for neurogenetic discovery is the vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster; fly memory research has identified genes and circuits that mediate aversive and appetitive learning. However, methods to study adaptive food-seeking behavior in this animal have lagged decades behind rodent feeding analysis, largely due to the challenges presented by their small scale. There is currently no method to dynamically control flies' access to food. In rodents, protocols that use dynamic food delivery are a central element of experimental paradigms that date back to the influential work of Skinner. This method is still commonly used in the analysis of learning, memory, addiction, feeding, and many other subjects in experimental psychology. The difficulty of microscale food delivery means this is not a technique used in fly behavior. In the present manuscript we describe a microfluidic chip integrated with machine vision and automation to dynamically control defined liquid food presentations and sensory stimuli. Strikingly, repeated presentations of food at a fixed location produced improvements in path efficiency during food approach. This shows that improved path choice is a learned behavior. Active control of food availability using this microfluidic system is a valuable addition to the methods currently available for the analysis of learned feeding behavior in flies.

Os laboratórios de Análise do Comportamento na Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais / The Behavior Analysis Laboratories at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Este texto objetiva construir uma narrativa histórica sobre os laboratórios de Análise do Comportamento da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), na década de 1970. A caixa de Skinner foi o principal objeto estudado, por sua centralidade para os referidos laboratórios. A década de 1970 foi escolhida, uma vez que os laboratórios de Análise do Comportamento foram instalados na UFMG, nessa época. A Historiografia foi o método de trabalho, especificamente o campo da História da Psicologia. As fontes utilizadas foram documentos escritos e orais. O principal resultado foi que o laboratório de Análise do Comportamento, a partir de seu uso didático, funcionou como um centralizador de agentes em prol de uma psicologia científica no recém-criado curso de Psicologia da UFMG.(AU)

This paper aims to construct a historical narrative about the Behavior Analysis laboratories at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) in the 1970s. The Skinner box was the main object studied due to its centrality for those laboratories. The 1970s was chosen because it was when Behavior Analysis laboratories were installed at UFMG. Historiography was the method of study, specifically, the field History of Psychology. The sources for the research were written and oral documents. The main result shows that the Behavior Analysis didactic laboratory served as a centralizing agent in favor of a scientific psychology in the newly created UFMG Psychology course.(AU)

Este texto objetiva construir una narrativa histórica acerca de los laboratorios de Análisis de la Conducta de la Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) en la década de 1970. La caja de Skinner fue el principal objeto estudiado, por su centralidad para los referidos laboratorios. Se eligió la década de 1970, pues en este periodo se instalaron los laboratorios de Análisis de la Conducta en la UFMG. La Historiografía fue el método de trabajo, específicamente el campo de la Historia de la Psicología. Las fuentes utilizadas fueron documentos escritos y orales. Como principal resultado, se observó que el laboratorio de Análisis de la Conducta, a partir de su uso didáctico, funcionó como un centralizador de agentes a favor de de una psicología científica en el recién creado curso de Psicología de la UFMG.(AU)

Os laboratórios de análise do comportamento na Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais / Los laboratorios de análisis de la conducta en la Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais / The Behavior analysis laboratories at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Este texto objetiva construir uma narrativa histórica sobre os laboratórios de Análise do Comportamento da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), na década de 1970. A caixa de Skinner foi o principal objeto estudado, por sua centralidade para os referidos laboratórios. A década de 1970 foi escolhida, uma vez que os laboratórios de Análise do Comportamento foram instalados na UFMG, nessa época. A Historiografia foi o método de trabalho, especificamente o campo da História da Psicologia. As fontes utilizadas foram documentos escritos e orais. O principal resultado foi que o laboratório de Análise do Comportamento, a partir de seu uso didático, funcionou como um centralizador de agentes em prol de uma psicologia científica no recém-criado curso de Psicologia da UFMG.

This paper aims to construct a historical narrative about the Behavior Analysis laboratories at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) in the 1970s. The Skinner box was the main object studied due to its centrality for those laboratories. The 1970s was chosen because it was when Behavior Analysis laboratories were installed at UFMG. Historiography was the method of study, specifically, the field History of Psychology. The sources for the research were written and oral documents. The main result shows that the Behavior Analysis didactic laboratory served as a centralizing agent in favor of a scientific psychology in the newly created UFMG Psychology course.

Este texto objetiva construir una narrativa histórica acerca de los laboratorios de Análisis de la Conducta de la Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) en la década de 1970. La caja de Skinner fue el principal objeto estudiado, por su centralidad para los referidos laboratorios. Se eligió la década de 1970, pues en este periodo se instalaron los laboratorios de Análisis de la Conducta en la UFMG. La Historiografía fue el método de trabajo, específicamente el campo de la Historia de la Psicología. Las fuentes utilizadas fueron documentos escritos y orales. Como principal resultado, se observó que el laboratorio de Análisis de la Conducta, a partir de su uso didáctico, funcionó como un centralizador de agentes a favor de de una psicología científica en el recién creado curso de Psicología de la UFMG.