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Peer-reviewedCC BYOxford open neuroscience

An operant-based touchscreen morph discrimination task does not detect age-related mnemonic similarity deficits in rats.

  • Aleyna Ross1,2
  • Carly N Logan1
  • John J Thompson1
  • Sarah A Johnson
  • Cory Watson1
  • Bianca Parra1
  • Maria Ramirez1
  • Katelyn N Lubke1
  • Andrew P Maurer1,2,3
  • Sara N Burke1,2,3,4
4 affiliations
  1. 1Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute, Center for Cognitive Aging and Memory, Department of Neuroscience, University of Florida, 1149 Newell Drive, Gainesville, FL 32611, United States.
  2. 2Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences, Neuroscience Concentration, University of Florida, 1149 Newell Drive, Gainesville, FL 32611, United States.
  3. 3Department of Neuroscience, College of Science, University of Arizona, 1040 East 4th Street, Tucson AZ 85719, United States.
  4. 4BIO5 Institute, The University of Arizona, 1657 E Helen Street, Tucson, AZ 85719, United States.
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Abstract

The Mnemonic Similarity Task (MST) is sensitive to age-related cognitive decline in humans and has been adapted for rodents using 3D objects, where aged animals show deficits discriminating similar lures. To improve translational alignment and increase automation, we developed a touchscreen-based rat analog using a morphed Object-Cued Spatial Choice task with 2D image stimuli. Young and aged male and female Fischer 344 × Brown Norway rats were trained in Bussey-Saksida touchscreen chambers and tested with image pairs that varied parametrically in feature overlap. In a subset of animals, we also assessed perirhinal cortical engagement using Arc expression following low- and high-overlap task epochs. Both age groups acquired the task, and morph testing showed that performance declined systematically as stimulus similarity increased, confirming that the task manipulated discrimination difficulty. However, young and aged rats performed similarly across overlap conditions. In the Arc experiment, discrimination accuracy was again reduced by greater stimulus overlap, but perirhinal cortical Arc expression did not differ reliably by age or overlap condition. These findings indicate that the touchscreen morph task is sensitive to stimulus similarity but does not detect age-related mnemonic discrimination deficits previously observed with 3D object-based rodent MST paradigms.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{ross2026operantbased,
  title = {{An operant-based touchscreen morph discrimination task does not detect age-related mnemonic similarity deficits in rats.}},
  author = {Aleyna Ross and Carly N Logan and John J Thompson and Sarah A Johnson and Cory Watson and Bianca Parra and Maria Ramirez and Katelyn N Lubke and Andrew P Maurer and Sara N Burke},
  journal = {Oxford open neuroscience},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.1093/oons/kvag015},
  url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42852134},
  note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - An operant-based touchscreen morph discrimination task does not detect age-related mnemonic similarity deficits in rats.
AU  - Aleyna Ross
AU  - Carly N Logan
AU  - John J Thompson
AU  - Sarah A Johnson
AU  - Cory Watson
AU  - Bianca Parra
AU  - Maria Ramirez
AU  - Katelyn N Lubke
AU  - Andrew P Maurer
AU  - Sara N Burke
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/01
JO  - Oxford open neuroscience
DO  - 10.1093/oons/kvag015
UR  - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42852134
AB  - The Mnemonic Similarity Task (MST) is sensitive to age-related cognitive decline in humans and has been adapted for rodents using 3D objects, where aged animals show deficits discriminating similar lures. To improve translational alignment and increase automation, we developed a touchscreen-based rat analog using a morphed Object-Cued Spatial Choice task with 2D image stimuli. Young and aged male and female Fischer 344 × Brown Norway rats were trained in Bussey-Saksida touchscreen chambers and tested with image pairs that varied parametrically in feature overlap. In a subset of animals, we also assessed perirhinal cortical engagement using Arc expression following low- and high-overlap task epochs. Both age groups acquired the task, and morph testing showed that performance declined systematically as stimulus similarity increased, confirming that the task manipulated discrimination difficulty. However, young and aged rats performed similarly across overlap conditions. In the Arc experiment, discrimination accuracy was again reduced by greater stimulus overlap, but perirhinal cortical Arc expression did not differ reliably by age or overlap condition. These findings indicate that the touchscreen morph task is sensitive to stimulus similarity but does not detect age-related mnemonic discrimination deficits previously observed with 3D object-based rodent MST paradigms.
SN  - 2753-149X
ER  -