Figure 1.

Flowchart overview of the main features of the touchscreen Trial-Unique delayed Nonmatching-to-Location (TUNL) task (a). The animal initiates a trial by a nose poke into the magazine. The program pseudo-randomly selects a trial type and presents one sample stimulus on the screen. The rat is required to touch the sample after which the delay starts. At the end of the delay, a choice between the previously illuminated sample location and a novel choice location is presented. If the animal responds correctly (touches the choice location), it is rewarded. If it responds incorrectly (touches the sample location), it is punished with a time out (5 s). Either response is further followed by an ITI of 20 s, after which the animal is required to initiate the next trial. If the previous response was incorrect, the same sample and choice locations will be presented. This loop will continue until a correct response has been made. The labels in italics indicate steps in which the animal is required to perform an action. (b) As an example (please refer to the text for actual dimensions), the TUNL mask with 15 locations is depicted. The choice phase is shown with two response windows illuminated at “separation 2” (separation is defined as the number of response windows separating two active locations).