An affordable and open-source tool for mouse behavioral studies–pyControl in an undergraduate research setting

Successfully navigating daily life requires the ability to process and respond to information and make adaptive decisions. Decision-making behaviors can be studied in mice as they share many of the same core working memory and cognitive processes with humans. The pyControl open-source chamber was selected as an affordable, customizable device that would allow for the testing of a wide range of behaviors including working memory and decision-making. Here, a pilot study was conducted to test the functionality of this apparatus in an undergraduate research setting. Mice were given time to acclimate to the chamber while the research team created and troubleshot the task in Python. Training occurred so that mice would associate responses with sucrose water rewards. Finally, mice were trained on a delayed match-to-position task where the mice had to match their response with the same choice that they had made on a previous trial. The purpose of this pilot study was to build, code, and test the delayed match-to position task in the pyControl chamber. The success of this pilot study opens up a range of other applications for behavioral neuroscience and stands as a useful model for other undergraduate lab and classroom settings.