A Touchscreen Device for Behavioral Testing in Pigs

Pigs are becoming more common research models due to their utility in studying neurological conditions such as traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer's disease, and Huntington's Disease. However, behavioral tasks often require a large apparatus and are not automated, which may disinterest researchers in using important functional measures. To address this, we developed a touchscreen that pigs could be trained on for behavioral testing. A rack-mounted touchscreen monitor was placed in an enclosed, weighted audio rack. A pellet dispenser was operated by a radio frequency transceiver to deliver fruit-flavored sugar pellets from across the testing room. Programs were custom written in Python and executed on a microcomputer. A behavioral shaping program was designed to train pigs to interact with the screen and setup responses for future tasks. Pigs rapidly learned to interact with the screen. To demonstrate efficacy in more complex behavior, two pigs were trained on a delay discounting tasks and two pigs on a color discrimination task. The device held up to repeated testing of large pigs and could be adjusted to the height of minipigs. The device can be easily recreated and constructed at a relatively low cost. Research topics ranging from brain injury to pharmacology to vision could benefit from behavioral tasks designed to specifically interrogate relevant function. More work will be needed to develop tests which are of specific relevance to these disciplines.

Automated summary

To address the lack of automated behavioral tasks for pigs in research, a touchscreen device was developed to train pigs for behavioral testing. The device allowed pigs to interact with the screen and complete specific tasks using custom-written programs and a radio frequency dispenser. The device proved effective in testing large pigs and can be easily recreated at a low cost, making it suitable for various research fields. However, further development is needed to create tests specific to each discipline.