Conditioned Reinforcement Protocol

General Overview
Conditioned Reinforcement is designed to assess the ability of a cue formerly paired with a reward to obtain conditioned incentive value that is independent from its outcome.

Apparatus
Experiments are conducted in an operant chamber with a well recessed in one wall and a small speaker in the opposing wall. During testing nosepoke ports OR levers are placed on each side of the well. Chambers are housed in sound attenuating boxes equipped with ventilation fans and ambient light.

Procedure

Training
Training begins with two sessions of magazine training that serve to shape mice to the well by delivering sucrose at random time intervals once per minute over 30 minutes. Following magazine training mice begin Pavlovian discrimination training during which one cue (tone, white noise, or clicker) becomes associated with a sucrose reward (CS+) and a second cue becomes associated with no outcome (CS-). Mice are trained to discriminate between stimuli and report to the well only during CS+ presentation. Mice typically do not have difficulty acquiring the discrimination in 14 sessions.

Testing
Once mice have acquired the discrimination, nosepoke ports OR levers are placed on either side of the well. Responding to one side results in the presentation of the CS+ while responding to the other side results in presentation of the CS-. Mice typically respond readily to the lever resulting the CS+ presentation.