Use of the NCTR operant test battery in nonhuman primates

Abstract

A battery of behavioral tasks, designed to monitor complex "cognitive" functions in nonhuman primates, has been in use for several years at the National Center for Toxicological Research. Subjects performing in this Operant Test Battery (OTB) work for food reinforcers and correct performance in each task contained in the OTB is thought to depend upon a relatively specific brain function. The specific tasks and the functions that they are thought to model are: delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS), short-term memory and attention; incremental repeated acquisition (IRA), learning; temporal response differentiation (TRD), time perception; progressive ratio (PR), motivation; and conditioned position responding (CPR), color and position discrimination. Data from various studies indicate that, in general: 1) OTB responding between subjects follows a normal or near-normal distribution; 2) performance in one task does not correlate very highly with performance in any of the other tasks; 3) females acquire correct OTB responding more rapidly than do males; and 4) the profile of disruption of task performance by acute drug administration varies depending upon drug class.