Touching on translation

During the last decade, the idea of a translational approach has become commonplace within the field of neuroscience. Despite the rapid adaptation of this theoretical framework, few examples of hypothesis-driven translation start with a pre-clinical finding and end with a positive clinical result and no examples of a novel medication have been developed in this way for the treatment of cognition-related disorders. Whereas instances of successful translation exist, most of these are the result of post-hoc hypothesis testing, rather than a priori hypothesis creation. Indeed, part of this disconnection between pre-clinical and clinical results has been driven by paradigms used at both the pre-clinical level (measurement of behaviors that might not be relevant to a patient population) and the clinical level (use of test batteries that cannot be modeled in a pre-clinical environment). However, automated cognition batteries that require responses to stimuli displayed upon a video monitor are decreasing the distance between pre-clinical and clinical behavioral studies. In the last 5 years, numerous papers have been published demonstrating that cognitive functions can be measured in a similar manner in the rodent as in a clinical setting via touch-screen-equipped operant boxes. Here, we argue that the touch-screen approach has the potential of being a powerful tool for the translation of pre-clinical hypotheses into positive clinical findings.