The Five-Choice Continuous Performance Task (5C-CPT): A Cross-Species Relevant Paradigm for Assessment of Vigilance and Response Inhibition in Rodents

Deficits in the domains of attention and response inhibition are central to many psychiatric disorders. As such, animal models of disorders purporting to replicate these behavioral deficits first require tests that can accurately assess the behaviors with high fidelity. The gold-standard clinical test of attention and response inhibition is the continuous performance test (CPT). Although there are a number of CPTs, all share the premise of responding to target stimuli and inhibiting from responding to non-target stimuli. The recently developed rodent five-choice CPT (5C-CPT) requires similar behavioral responses, enabling signal detection parameter calculations. With demonstrable feasibility for rodent testing, the 5C-CPT permits/facilitates: (1) delineation of neural mechanisms underlying these behaviors; (2) multifactorial analyses of the complex interplay between genetic and environmental manipulations relevant to psychiatric disorders; and hence (3) development of novel targeted treatments. All data to date indicate that the rodent 5C-CPT described here has direct translatability to clinical CPTs, producing equivalent measures of behavior in experimental animals to those assessed in humans. The 5C-CPT task provides an important tool toward delineating these mechanisms and developing treatments. However, it is also complex, with long training times and nuances requiring a thorough understanding before utilization. This unit will enable researchers to avoid potential missteps, greatly increasing the likelihood of success. © 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.