Research reportPavlovian contextual and instrumental biconditional discrimination learning in mice

- C57BL/6J mice acquired a Pavlovian contextual biconditional discrimination.
- C57BL/6J mice acquired an instrumental biconditional discrimination.
- Food pellets were used to reinforce Pavlovian targets and instrumental responses.
- Differential responding was observed in each cue in training and in extinction.
- Performance did not depend on within-session rules based on outcome presentations.

Genetically-modified animal models are a powerful tool for investigating the link between neurological and behavioral changes and for the development of therapeutic interventions. Executive function deficits are symptomatic of many human clinical disorders but few tasks exist for studying executive functions in mice. To address this need, we describe procedures for establishing Pavlovian contextual and instrumental biconditional discriminations (BCDs) in C57BL/6J mice. In the first experiment, contextual cues disambiguated when two short duration stimulus targets would be followed by food pellets. In the second experiment, discrete visual cues signaled when lever press or nose poke responses would be continuously reinforced with food pellets. Mice learned both BCDs as evidenced by differential responding in each cue during training and, more critically, during extinction testing. The implications of these findings for using BCD tasks to analyze the neural substrates of executive processing in animal models are discussed.