Blockade of muscarinic acetylcholine receptors facilitates motivated behaviour and rescues a model of antipsychotic-induced amotivation.

Disruptions to motivated behaviour are a highly prevalent and severe symptom in a number of neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. Current treatment options for these disorders have little or no effect upon motivational impairments. We assessed the contribution of muscarinic acetylcholine receptors to motivated behaviour in mice, as a novel pharmacological target for motivational impairments.

Oxygen responses within the nucleus accumbens are associated with individual differences in effort exertion in rats.

Goal-directed motivated behaviour is crucial for everyday life. Such behaviour is often measured, in rodents, under a progressive ratio (PR) schedule of reinforcement. Previous studies have identified a few brain structures critical for supporting PR performance.

Validation and optimisation of a touchscreen progressive ratio test of motivation in male rats.

Rationale: Across species, effort-related motivation can be assessed by testing behaviour under a progressive ratio (PR) schedule of reinforcement. However, to date, PR tasks for rodents have been available using traditional operant response systems only.

Objectives: Touchscreen operant response systems allow the assessment of behaviour in laboratory rodents, using tasks that share high face validity with the computerised assessments used in humans.

Effects of anterior cingulate cortex lesions on a continuous performance task for mice.

Important tools in the study of prefrontal cortical-dependent executive functions are cross-species behavioural tasks with translational validity. A widely used test of executive function and attention in humans is the continuous performance task (CPT). Optimal performance in variations of this task is associated with activity along the medial wall of the prefrontal cortex, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), for its essential components such as response control, target detection and processing of false alarm errors.