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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Aug 1.
Published in final edited form as: Behav Neurosci. 2019 Mar 21;133(4):448–459. doi: 10.1037/bne0000310

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Illustration of the Sustained Attention Task (SAT) and pre-rmCc performance of WT and CHT+/− mice. a: The SAT consisted of a randomized sequence of signal or cue (illumination of the center panel light; see left photograph) and non-signal (or non-cue) events, followed by extension of the two response ports. Hits and correct rejections, but not misses and false alarms, were rewarded. Note the matching colors of the arrows pointing to the response ports for the four response categories and the arrows in the outcome matrix on the top right, indicating that, in cued trials, hits (red arrows) are rewarded and in non-cued trials, correct rejections were rewarded (dark blue). Conversely, misses (pink arrows) and false alarms (light blue arrows) were not rewarded and triggered an intertrial interval. The photographs depict a cue event (left), followed by a hit (2nd from the left, red frame, matching the arrow color), and non-cued trial (third from left) followed by a correct rejection (dark blue frame). b-d: Prior to the administration of rmCc, SAT performance did not differ between genotypes and mice assigned to receive either SH or rmCc (for ANOVAs see Results; WT SH: n=6; WT rmCc: n=15; CHT+/− SH: n=9; CHT+/− rmCc: n=14). Neither the relative number of hits to 500, 50, and 25-ms signals (b), the relative number of correct rejections (c), nor the number of omissions (out of a total of 170 trials /session; d) differed between the genotypes and assignment to SH or rmCc. e illustrates the timeline of the main experiment. Following SAT acquisition, five rmCc events were separated individually by 5 days of SAT practice. After the final 5 days of practice, after the 5th event, the brains of the majority of mice were harvested for neurochemical and histological analyses while a small proportion of rmCc-treated mice (n=4 per genotype) continued daily SAT practice for an additional 28 sessions to determine lasting effects. f shows the transfer ram of the rmCc apparatus. The addition of this transfer ram constituted the main modification of the apparatus previously used by Kane et al. (2012) to administer repeated, relatively mild impacts in mice. This transfer ram was equipped with an internal compression ring to further limit the impact of the weight drop.