A novel behavioural task for rodents: olfactory discrimination in a visual context

AMIGO DURÁN, MACARENA; ROMANO, SEBASTIÁN A.; MARIN-BURGIN, ANTONIA; FEDERMAN, NOEL

Villa Carlos Paz, Córdoba

Congreso; XXXIV Congreso Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias; 2019

The ability to learn that a sensory stimulus signals a reward or punishment is one of the brain?s function most critical for adaptation and survival. How animals integrate information about a learned sensory stimuli with the spatial context and the animal´s internal state is not completely understood. Here we developed a learning paradigm to assess the influence of spatial context on the association of odor-reward. Water-restricted mice were trained to perform a GO/NO GO discrimination task in which the animal learns to drink water or not depending on the visual context in which the odor is presented. In a head-fixed state, animals arrive to different spatial contexts by running in a virtual reality environment. We show that animals reached criterion within a few sessions. Licking response developed readily, shifted from being constant throughout the trial to being adjusted to the reward zone. Locomotion speed and inhalation rate also changed, depending on trial types. We observed that mice learn to discriminate odors faster than visual contexts, suggesting a difference in stimuli salience. Since proper response to odor help animals to adapt to changing environments, we studied flexibility of the behavior. We carried out a reversal learning protocol by changing the rewarded odor. Results showed that reversing the behavior took 3-4 sessions. This behavioral task is suited to probing the neural basis of spatial context modulation of an olfactory-based behavior.