Rats can estimate their timing accuracy

Date:
February 22, 2022
Source:
CNRS
Summary:
Just like humans, rats are able to estimate a temporal error in
their actions. This discovery opens up new avenues for identifying
the mechanisms and brain structures which underlie the internal
representation of time.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Thanks to their capacity for introspection, human beings are able to
estimate the duration of their actions. When they perform a task --
especially a time- based task -- they can evaluate their performance and correct themselves in order to do better next time. This ability is not exclusive to the human species: new research has just demonstrated for
the first time that the rat can also do so!

========================================================================== These results were obtained in a joint study undertaken by researchers
from the Institut des neurosciences Paris-Saclay (CNRS/Universite' Paris-Saclay), Neurospin (CEA) and a researcher from the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Scientists developed a behavioural task in which rats were taught
to press a lever for at least 3.2 seconds. In a second phase, two
feeders distributed a reward according to the animal's performance:
if it completed the task with a small error, just above 3.2 seconds,
it received food in the left feeder, and in case of a larger deviation,
in the right feeder1. The rats thus learned that the location of the
reward depended on their accuracy.

In a third stage, the rodents were given a choice of both feeders, but
the reward was only distributed after they chose one feeder. The result
was that the rats chose the correct side, i.e. the one corresponding
to their temporal error -- "precise" for the left-hand feeder or "not
precise" for the right-hand one -- and, confident in finding food there,
they did this all the more quickly.

The research team explains this behaviour by the animals' past experience (track record of rewards obtained), but also by the rats' analysis of
their performance: during each trial, the rodents evaluated the precision
with which they had carried out the task requested and were able to engage
in "error monitoring." Demonstrating this ability in rats opens doors
to new kinds of animal research to better understand these behaviours
in humans. How does the brain assess temporal errors? This fundamental
question in neuroscience underlies the learning process. Future research
will be able to deepen fundamental knowledge on the mechanisms and brain structures involved in our internal representation of time.

Notes 1- Error thresholds were adjusted for each rat, depending on the performance of each animal.

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for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Tadeusz Władysław Kononowicz, Virginie van Wassenhove,
Vale'rie
Doye`re. Rodents monitor their error in self-generated duration
on a single trial basis. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 2022; 119 (9): e2108850119 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2108850119 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220222125100.htm

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