Rats use strategies to make object choices in spontaneous object recognition tasks

Ross, T.W.; Easton, A.

Abstract

Rodent spontaneous object recognition (SOR) paradigms are widely used to study the mechanisms of complex memory in many laboratories. Due to the absence of explicit reinforcement in these tasks, there is an underlying assumption that object exploratory behaviour is ‘spontaneous’. However, rodents can strategise, readily adapting their behaviour depending on the current information available and prior predications formed from learning and memory. Here, using the object-place-context (episodic-like) recognition task and novel analytic methods relying on multiple trials within a single session, we demonstrate that rats use a context-based or recency-based object recognition strategy for the same types of trials, depending on task conditions. Exposure to occasional ambiguous conditions changed animals’ responses towards a recency-based preference. However, more salient and predictable conditions led to animals exploring objects on the basis of episodic novelty reliant on contextual information. The results have important implications for future research using SOR tasks, especially in the way experimenters design, analyse and interpret object recognition experiments in non-human animals.

Citation

Ross, T., & Easton, A. (2022). Rats use strategies to make object choices in spontaneous object recognition tasks. Scientific Reports, 12, Article 16973. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-21537-1

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 28, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Oct 10, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022
• Deposit Date: Oct 4, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 11, 2022
• Journal: Scientific Reports
• Electronic ISSN: 2045-2322
• Publisher: Nature Research
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 12
• Article Number: 16973
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-21537-1
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1190359