Figure 1. Schematic of behavioral setup and bonsai workflow

We used two behavioral chambers (Figure 1), one for mice and one for rats. The underside of the maze floor was designed for rear projection using a mirror and a LCD projector. We then used Bonsai to control the sound, light, reward, and cameras to record rodent behaviors. The task required subjects to virtually touch a projected light stimulus in order to receive a water reward.

Figure 2.  Rat Training Protocol; Associating Light and Reward

Figure 3. Infrared Centroid Tracking and Heat Map

Rats quickly learn to touch a 'virtual' bottom projected light for rewards. We expanded upon this behavioral paradigm finding rats to be capable of touching a sequence of at least 10 stimuli in order to recieve a reward. As the trials progressed subjects demonstrated a decreased latency to receive reward, indicating a better understanding of the task demands (figure 4). Computer vision tracking also suggests that they change their exploration strategies in order to take the shortest path to the light and subsequent reward (e.g. see circular paths to the highly occupied reward location in figure 3). While mice can learn the initial auditory/ reward pairings in this task they did not successfully learn visual/ reward pairings, possibly due to poorer visual discrimination.