Bussey-Saksida Open Modular Touch Screen Chamber for Rats
 

Bussey-Saksida Open Modular Touch Screen Chamber for Rats

Model 80604A-OM


Entry-level modular touch screen chamber incorporates an optimized square wall structure with many add-on options available to tailor your chamber to fit even the most unique requirements.

  • The rodent touchscreen chambers are now used by over 300 Research Groups in at least 26 countries
  • Write your own Tasks or use one of the many pre-written validated Tasks currently available, including all training paradigms as a turn-key solution.
  • Third party systems can be integrated with TTL input and output lines, with low e.m.c. noise 80604EA chambers for integrating with Electrophysiology Recording
  • Touch Screen Chambers deliver all the Tasks of a traditional lever or nose-poke operant chamber, but they can do so much more.
  • Translational research: the rodents Tasks are virtually identical to tasks used with NHP & human populations on the CANTAB system.
  • A battery of cognitive Tasks for rat and mouse from simple to complex, with training times accordingly from days to weeks.
  • Following 10 years of customer feedback and continuous development, we have redesigned the system to be even more flexible and with more features.
 

Details

A decade of continuous development

​​First developed in 2009 at Cambridge University, the Bussey Saksida Rodent Touch Screen Chamber family is now used by over 300 different Research Groups in at least 26 countries. The original Bussey-Saksida Touch Screen Chamber - now in its second generation is has always featured a unique trapezoidal wall shape in order to focus the animal's attention. Our new system improves the efficient and high-throughput evaluation of rodents.

Open Modular Chamber

Configure Your Chamber, Your Way

The Second-Generation Bussey-Saksida Rodent Touch Screen Chamber is now available with a square wall structure optimized for use with many modular configurations. Known as the Bussey-Saksida Open Modular Touch Screen Chamber, this new package further simplifies set up for levers, lights, and a range of other operators to accommodate any task with striking similarity to a traditional operant chamber.

Open Modular Chamber

It's easy to get started

Each Chamber Includes

  • Ultra-sensitive Touch Screen to consistently detect a mouse nosepoke to the touchscreen. Commercially available touchscreens are not sensitive enough to reliably detect every nosepoke.
  • Core Intelli-interface that accommodates controlling 20 chambers with a single PC.
  • Modular panel walls with a non-reflective finish.
  • Add Ambulatory IR beams, camera observation, retractable levers, lights, or additional nose pokes and grid bar floor to your requirements.
 

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You can even start with any of our popular set up options. Want to upgrade later? There is an easy upgrade path to our fully-featured cognition chamber!

Video

The Second Generation Bussey-Saksida chamber was built with video in mind. New non-reflective walls and floors will aid video tracking, and IR and ambient lighting located under the chamber lid provide even lighting of the chamber and eliminate glare.

 

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Tethered Animals

Many accommodations for tethers can be made including updated lid and open reward areas to accommodate headstages. A convenient sliding drawer can be added to the environmental cabinet to neatly store and feed the tether.

 

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Electrophysiology

All electronic components are adjusted to reduce EMC. The environmental cabinet is a Faraday cage to prevent outside noise from the surrounding area from entering the chamber. Even the touch screen itself is shielded to reduce noise emission.

 

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Designed for simplicity and flexibility

  • Many add-on modular operators available.
  • Fully validated, ready written Task Suites which come with training paradigms and testing guidance.
  • ABET Cognition Software gives you programming power, data analysis, versatility, and flexibility; video and audio control also included.
  • Virtual Interface enables users to easily write their own scheduling and assess the data away from the lab.
  • Online training to get your lab quickly working with high productivity.

 


Paradigms

Rat VMCL Open Modular

The Bussey-Saksida chamber allows usage of standard, original, and customized paradigms. The rodent tasks range from simple to complex and are Translational to the same Tasks used with NHP and human populations on the Cambridge Neurological Test Automation Battery (CANTAB) system. All paradigms include training routines as well as the main experimental paradigm and the data analysis sets. Certain standard tasks may require the full high cognition touch screen chamber.

 

View Paradigms

 

NHP/Human CANTAB Equivalent Standard Tasks Typical time to reach baseline Example neural systems involved Clinical area showing impairment
NHP Pretraining to touch an image and initiate a trial 1-2 weeks   Learning
Human/NHP Pairwise / Visual Discrimination (PD) and Reversal Learning Pretraining + 5-7 sessions test to reach base line Prefrontal Cortex, Perirhinal Cortex, Anterior Cingulate, Posterior Cingulate, Medial Frontal Cortex, Striatum, Dopamine system, Cholinergic system, NMDA receptors. Mediodorsal Nucleus of the Thalamus Huntington's, Schizophrenia, Parkinson's, Learning, Cognitive Flexibility, Executive Function.
NHP Visuomotor Conditional Learning for Rodents (VMCL) Pretraining + Approximately 20 sessions Dorsal Striatum, Posterior Cingulate Cortex Huntington's, Parkinson's
NHP Location Discrimination for Rodents (LD) Pretraining + 10-20 sessions Hippocampus, Neurogenesis Alzheimer's, Schizophrenia
NHP Extinction for Rodents (EXT) Approximately 4 sessions training + a sessions days extinction Infralimbic Cortex, Striatum and Amygdala ADHD, OCD
NHP Progressive Ratio and Effort Related Choice Task for Rodents (PR/ERC) 16 sessions from first habituation to reach stable PR performance Dopamine Motivation, Decision Making


Features

  • Write your own Tasks or use one of the many pre-written validated Tasks currently available, including all training paradigms.
  • Modular construction requires lower initial cost yet retains a simple upgrade path to a turn-key High Cognition chamber.
  • Walls now in a lighter color that provides better contrast for the camera to capture the animal's image or contour when tracking.
  • The chamber floor is now matted to reduced glare from the house-light, again for better consistent image capture by a camera for observation or tracking.
  • Easier animal handling with side or top loading as standard.
  • Door with magnetic catches for quiet operation.
  • Easier access to remove the floor for cleaning.
  • Optional Integration with other measures such as Optogenetics, Photometry, Video Tracking and Electrophysiology Recording are available.
  • Additional third-party systems can be integrated with TTL input and output lines, with low e.m.c. noise 80604EA chambers for integrating with Electrophysiology Recording

Specifications

Animal Working Area

  • 260mm Wide x 300mm Tall x 325mm Deep

Standard Environmental Cabinet

  • Attenuation: Approx. 35dB
  • Weight: 38 kg (empty)
  • External Dimensions: 600mm Wide x 670mm Tall x 352mm Deep
  • Internal Dimensions: 540mm Wide x 610mm Tall x 352mm Deep

Extra Height Environmental Cabinet

  • Recommended for rats with tethers
  • Attenuation: Approx. 35dB
  • Weight: 38 kg (empty)
  • External Dimensions: 600mm Wide x 730mm Tall x 500mm Deep
  • Internal Dimensions: 540mm Wide x 670mm Tall x 440mm Deep

Science

The Touch Screen has been used to develop a wide range of tasks, probing different areas of cognition, most of which are available ready written with programs and information to train the rodents to the task.

The design of the Touch Screen chamber and the tasks were both found to be crucial to get good and consistent results - comparable results have been achieved by labs all over the world using the Lafayette/Campden Touch Screen and these prewritten tasks. Implementation of the smooth trapeziodal walls and extra sensitive Touch Screens significantly reduced the training times and rodent performance – minimizing distraction and making sure all nosepokes to the screen are detected.

As well as being able to compare results with other rodent Touch Screen work, the chambers also lend themselves to comparing with both NHP and Human Touch Screen Tasks.

View our webinar on Using Touchscreen Operant Systems to Study Cognitive Behaviors in Rodents

Translational Science

Translational Science

Human CANTAB was developed at Cambridge University, UK, from well-known animal models of behaviour.  This has allowed the development of a range of cognitive tests proven to be sensitive to specific regions of the brain. These language free Human CANTAB tests have been further developed to make them suitable for monkey studies - incorporating as few changes as possible. 

Monkey CANTAB was developed by a group including Drs T.W. Robbins and A.C. Roberts at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, England, to improve the comparative assessment from animals to humans. The result is a battery of tests that can be used to study cognition in both experimental primates in the laboratory and humans in the clinic.  Link to Monkey CANTAB Page 

Professors Tim Bussey and Lisa Saksida at the Cognitive Systems Neuroscience Laboratory, University of Cambridge, England have also developed rodent touchscreen chambers and tasks for rats and mice to again find tasks that are translational to human cognitive tests. 

An important consideration in the development translational tasks has been to maximise the likelihood that the same cognitive abilities are used by both animals and humans to perform each test. Consequently, complex tasks are broken down into their constituent elements and each element assessed independently of the next in a step-by-step progression through the test. Guiding a subject through the test in this way restricts the use of alternative strategies and permits an analysis of performance in terms of the cognitive components involved. Functional equivalence is suggested if the pattern of performance of animals and humans, at each stage of the test, is qualitatively similar and if comparable impairments are seen following damage to selective brain structures. A growing bibliography is building evidence that this is the case. 

Key Paper - Touchscreen cognitive testing: Cross-species translation and co-clinical trials in neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disease, Palmer et al, Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 2021, 107443

One case in point concerns the Paired Associate Learning Task (PAL). In human studies early onset Alzheimer’s patients have shown significant deficiencies on this task. Humans with a DLG2 mutation have been found to be impaired on PAL. Likewise DLG2 knock out mice show impairment as shown here. [Nithianantharajah et al, Nature Neuroscience, 2013, 16

Several strains of rats and mice have been used in the touchscreen chambers, including transgenic and knock out animals. 

In a Lab Animal Review article it is also argued that the translational nature the tasks, the lack of aversive stimuli and the wide range of psychological constructs that can be evaluated, means the touchscreen method can yield significant 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction and Refinement) benefits.

Accessories

Optional Accessories

Two-choice Paired/Visual Discrimination Reversal (PD) for Rats
Two-choice Paired/Visual Discrimination Reversal (PD) for Rats
Model 89540A-R

Adapted for rats, this reversal learning task requires inhibition of prepotent responses and is known to be dependent on the prefrontal cortex.

Extinction (EXT) for Rats
Extinction (EXT) for Rats
Model 89547A-R

Adapted for rats, this is a simple, but powerful, test of behavioral inhibition.

Progressive Ratio and Effort Related Choice Task (PR/ERC) for Rats
Progressive Ratio and Effort Related Choice Task (PR/ERC) for Rats
Model 89549A-R

Adapted for rats, this touch screen task has been shown equivalent to those performed with levers or nose-poke holes in measuring motivation and reward-related decision making.

Visuomotor Conditional Learning (VMCL) for Rats
Visuomotor Conditional Learning (VMCL) for Rats
Model 89542A-R

Adapted for rats, this is a habit or stimulus-response task in which the rodent learns a conditional rule.

Location Discrimination (LD) for Rats
Location Discrimination (LD) for Rats
Model 89546A-R

Adapted for rats, this is a spatial memory task with a reversal learning component. It is sensitive to hippocampal lesions and associated with glutamate receptor regulation and signaling.

Related Products

Second Generation Bussey-Saksida Touch Screen Chamber for Rats
Second Generation Bussey-Saksida Touch Screen Chamber for Rats
Model 80604A

The Second Generation Bussey Chambers with Intelli-interface supports up to 20 chambers on one PC. On the strength of 10 years of feedback and development, the system is even more flexible and with more features.

ABET Core Intelli-Interface for Easy Multi-Chamber Control
ABET Core Intelli-Interface for Easy Multi-Chamber Control
Model 81430

ABET Core Intelli-interface is a smart interface which controls all aspects of your chambers including touchscreen and computer-generated audio.

ABET Cognition Software
ABET Cognition Software
Model 89515

From writing schedules to analyzing data, ABET Cognition gives you the powerful and flexible tools necessary to control a network of touch screen chamber systems.

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