Citric Acid Water as an Alternative to Water Restriction for High-Yield Mouse Behavior.

Powerful neural measurement and perturbation tools have positioned mice as an ideal species for probing the neural circuit mechanisms of cognition. Crucial to this success is the ability to motivate animals to perform specific behaviors. One successful strategy is to restrict their water intake, rewarding them with water during a behavioral task. However, water restriction requires rigorous monitoring of animals' health and hydration status and can be challenging for some mice. We present an alternative that allows mice more control over their water intake: free home-cage access to water, made slightly sour by a small amount of citric acid (CA). In a previous study, rats with free access to CA water readily performed a behavioral task for water rewards, although completing fewer trials than under water restriction (Reinagel, 2018). We here extend this approach to mice and confirm its robustness across multiple laboratories. Mice reduced their intake of CA water while maintaining healthy weights. Continuous home-cage access to CA water only subtly impacted their willingness to perform a decision-making task, in which they were rewarded with sweetened water. When free CA water was used instead of water restriction only on weekends, learning and decision-making behavior were unaffected. CA water is thus a promising alternative to water restriction, allowing animals more control over their water intake without interfering with behavioral performance

Standardized and reproducible measurement of decision-making in mice

Progress in science requires standardized assays whose results can be readily shared, compared, and reproduced across laboratories. Reproducibility, however, has been a concern in neuroscience, particularly for measurements of mouse behavior. Here we show that a standardized task to probe decision-making in mice produces reproducible results across multiple laboratories. We designed a task for head-fixed mice that combines established assays of perceptual and value-based decision making, and we standardized training protocol and experimental hardware, software, and procedures. We trained 140 mice across seven laboratories in three countries, and we collected 5 million mouse choices into a publicly available database. Learning speed was variable across mice and laboratories, but once training was complete there were no significant differences in behavior across laboratories. Mice in different laboratories adopted similar reliance on visual stimuli, on past successes and failures, and on estimates of stimulus prior probability to guide their choices. These results reveal that a complex mouse behavior can be successfully reproduced across multiple laboratories. They establish a standard for reproducible rodent behavior, and provide an unprecedented dataset and open-access tools to study decision-making in mice. More generally, they indicate a path towards achieving reproducibility in neuroscience through collaborative open-science approaches

Post-pollination barriers do not explain the persistence of two distinct Antirrhinum subspecies with parapatric distribution

International audienc

Locally asymmetric introgressions between subspecies suggest circular range expansion at the Antirrhinum majus global scale

International audienc

A direct-sampling multi-channel receiver for DOCSIS 3.0 in 65nm CMOS

This paper presents a fully integrated direct sampling receiver for DOCSIS 3.0, consisting of a time-interleaved ADC, a digital multi-channel selection filter, and a PLL. The receiver can simultaneously receive 4 streams from arbitrary RF frequencies between 48 and 1002MHz and output these in a 13.5MS/s digital IQ format or at a low-IF through integrated DACs. It consumes 980mW from a split 1.2/1.3/1.6V supply when receiving 4 channels and occupies 16.8mm2 in 65nm CMOS