Distracting or arousing conditions of testing have been used to study specifically visual selective attention in the 5-CSRTT in rodent models of human brain dysfunction (e.g. ADHD).
The Montoya staircase test has been used to measure skilled forelimb performance in animal research also, but I have not came across any published work that used distracting conditions, as a method to study the role of attentional processes in motor performance.
I plan to duplicate the 5-CSRTT method with olfactory distraction I use in my research on attention to "see" if this method can also impact the skilled forelimb performance in my rats in the Montoya staircase test.
If anyone has came across such work or is a "user" of the staircase test, please share the info or your own views on a method that would "distract" rodents from performing skilled forelimb movements in the Montoya staircase test?
We had some success using kairomones from a large male ferret named Hobbs. Interestingly enough when the rats froze they also produced beautiful Type II theta rhythm in the dentate nucleus and CA1 layers in their hippocampus : ) Hope this helps
Dr. Chris Montoya
I should have added previously that snakes also work well. See: Sainsbury and Montoya 1984 Physiology & Behavior Vol 33, pp 621-626. If you ever need a junior author on one of your papers using the Montoya Staircase Test please let me know : )
I previously was Chief Designer of the Staircase Test and Head of the design team, Downing College, University of Cambridge
Thank you Dr. Montoya for the suggestions. We considered using the predator smells of fox... to distract our rats during staircase performance but ended opting for less powerful distracters that are identical to those we use in our visual attention task. Unfortunately, we observed that only the number of pellets taken were impacted by this manipulation whereas those eaten or the ratio of eaten/taken unaffected by distracters. I am not fully satisfied with what we did thus far and hope to do more in the next funding cycle. One issue we struggle with was the timing of the odor delivery during the 10 min trial as well as its duration. Any thoughts on this? Thanks again for your time and designing such a clever and simple device. It has advanced my understanding of the neurobehavioral impacts of developmental manganese poisoning in rats.
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