Med pc for windows software

Operant rat chambers were contained in ventilated, sound attenuated boxes and all responding occurred on a single wall. The wall contained a central house light, signal display panel and nose poke port, and a food magazine on either side of the nose poke port. Rats were rewarded with 45 mg grain pellets (Bioserv, Frenchtown, NJ, USA) delivered to the food receptacle, which was equipped with a head entry detector. Prior to testing rats were habituated to the dimly lit testing room for 30 min. The chamber was operated using MED-PC for Windows software and interfacing (Med Associates Inc., St. Albans, VT, USA).

Operant training was conducted in 22 operant chambers located inside sound-attenuating chambers (Med Associates Inc., Fairfax, VT, USA). The front wall of each chamber had two retractable levers, a pellet dispenser (45 mg), located between the two levers, and three incandescent panel lights (20 ± 2 lux). The central panel light, located above the pellet dispenser, was used in the present experiment for the presentation of signals. A house light was located at the top of the rear wall of the operant chamber. Signal presentation, lever operation, reinforcement delivery, and data collection were controlled by a PC and Med-PC for Windows software (V 4.1.3; Med Associates, Inc., Fairfax, VT, USA).

Operant chambers were contained in sound attenuated boxes with ventilation fans (Med Associates Inc., St. Albans, VT, USA) and overhead cameras for monitoring behavior (CCD Mini CCIR, Samsung). All chambers were 50 × 50 × 50 cm and were assembled for either 5CSRTT or SDT training (Turner et al., 2013 (link)). For 5CSRTT there was a curved wall with five horizontal apertures each containing a light and head entry detector. On the opposing wall there was a house light and food magazine that was also equipped with a light and head entry detector. The arrangement for SDT training was on a single chamber wall with a house light, signal display panel and nose poke port in the middle, and a food magazine on either side of the nose poke port. The central nose poke port and magazines each contained a light and head entry detector. The signal display panel consisted of a 3 × 3 grid of light emitting diodes (5 mm, green diffuse, 80 MCD). All rats were rewarded with 45 mg grain pellets (F0021, dustless precision pellet, Bioserv, Frenchtown, NJ, USA) delivered to the food magazines. The protocols was designed using MedState Notation while operation and data acquisition was conducted using Med-PC for Windows software (Med Associates Inc., St. Albans, VT, USA).