A Kiosk Station for the Assessment of Multiple Cognitive Domains and Cognitive Enrichment of Monkeys.

Thilo Womelsdorf,Christopher Thomas,Marcus R Watson,Kianoush Banaie Boroujeni,Adam Neumann,Kari L Hoffman,Jeremy Parker,Seyed A Hassani

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2021.721069

Abstract

Nonhuman primates (NHP’s) are self-motivated to perform cognitive tasks on touchscreens in their animal housing setting. To leverage this ability, fully integrated hardware and software solutions are needed that work within housing and husbandry routines while also spanning cognitive task constructs of the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC). Here, we detail such an integrated robust hardware and software solution for running cognitive tasks in cage-housed NHP’s with a cage-mounted Kiosk Station (KS-1). KS-1 consists of a frame for mounting flexibly on housing cages, a touchscreen animal interface with mounts for receptables, reward pumps, and cameras, and a compact computer cabinet with an interface for controlling behavior. Behavioral control is achieved with a Unity3D program that is virtual-reality capable, allowing semi-naturalistic visual tasks to assess multiple cognitive domains.KS-1 is fully integrated into the regular housing routines of monkeys. A single person can operate multiple KS-1’s. Monkeys engage with KS-1 at high motivation and cognitive performance levels at high intra-individual consistency. KS-1 is optimized for flexible mounting onto standard apartment cage systems and provides a new design variation complementing existing cage-mounted touchscreen systems. KS-1 has a robust animal interface with options for gaze/reach monitoring. It has an integrated user interface for controlling multiple cognitive tasks using a common naturalistic object space designed to enhance task engagement. All custom KS-1 components are open-sourced.In summary, KS-1 is a versatile new tool for cognitive profiling and cognitive enrichment of cage-housed monkeys. It reliably measures multiple cognitive domains which promises to advance our understanding of animal cognition, inter-individual differences, and underlying neurobiology in refined, ethologically meaningful behavioral foraging contexts.

Highlights

Monkeys are housed in captive settings in zoos, primate service centers, and research institutions
A second major challenge is the implementation of a cognitive task space for animals that meaningfully assesses performance across multiple cognitive domains
The monkeys engaged with the kiosk tasks, but made pauses during task engagement, which was quantifiable in overall lower performance and inconsistent performance

Summary

Introduction

Monkeys are housed in captive settings in zoos, primate service centers, and research institutions. A rich, >30 years long history has shown that in these settings monkeys willingly engage in complex computerized cognitive tasks (Rumbaugh et al, 1989; Perdue et al, 2018) In their regular housing environments, monkeys (nonhuman primates, NHP’s) engage with joysticks or touchscreens, can semi-automatically train themselves on visual discrimination tasks, and when offered to freely choose amongst different tasks, they show motivation and insights into which cognitive tasks are most rewarding for them (Washburn et al, 1991; Gazes et al, 2013; Calapai et al, 2017; Fizet et al, 2017; Berger et al, 2018; Sacchetti et al, 2021).

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