Visiomode
a platform for building rodent touchscreen-based visuomotor tasks
I’m still writing this up, sorry!
References
2023
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Visiomode: An open-source platform for building rodent touchscreen-based behavioral assaysConstantinos Eleftheriou, Thomas Clarke, V. Poon, Marie Zechner, and Ian DuguidJournal of Neuroscience Methods, 2023Touchscreen-based behavioral assays provide a robust method for assessing cognitive behavior in rodents, offering great flexibility and translational potential. The development of touchscreen assays presents a significant programming and mechanical engineering challenge, where commercial solutions can be prohibitively expensive and open-source solutions are underdeveloped, with limited adaptability. Here, we present Visiomode (www.visiomode.org), an open-source platform for building rodent touchscreen-based behavioral tasks. Visiomode leverages the inherent flexibility of touchscreens to offer a simple yet adaptable software and hardware platform. The platform is built on the Raspberry Pi computer combining a web-based interface and powerful plug-in system with an operant chamber that can be adapted to generate a wide range of behavioral tasks. As a proof of concept, we use Visiomode to build both simple stimulus-response and more complex visual discrimination tasks, showing that mice display rapid sensorimotor learning including switching between different motor responses (i.e., nose poke versus reaching). Commercial solutions are the go-to for rodent touchscreen behaviors, but the associated costs can be prohibitive, limiting their uptake by the wider neuroscience community. While several open-source solutions have been developed, efforts so far have focused on reducing the cost, rather than promoting ease of use and adaptability. Visiomode addresses these unmet needs providing a low-cost, extensible platform for creating touchscreen tasks. Developing an open-source, rapidly scalable and low-cost platform for building touchscreen-based behavioral assays should increase uptake across the science community and accelerate the investigation of cognition, decision-making and sensorimotor behaviors both in health and disease.
