This spring, representatives at Campden Instruments held a video interview with Associate Professor Jess Nithianantharajah from the University of Melbourne. Thank you to Associate Professor Nithianantharajah for taking the time to discuss the importance of cognitive behavior research and the role of the touchscreen chamber.

Can you tell us about your journey into cognitive behavior?

Associate Professor Nithianantharajah’s journey to cognition began in high school through an interest in psychology – eventually studying both psychology and neuroscience at University where she obtained a PhD studying how changes in brain connections underlie learning and experience. This trajectory brought her into contact with Professors Tim Bussey and Lisa Saksida, now part of the Translational Cognitive Neuroscience lab at Western University, and Seth Grant from the University of Edinburgh, who were all working on aspects of behavioral research.

“It forged my passion in understanding the brain changes in connections that underlie cognition and learning”

The time with Dr. Grant was integral to developing preclinical models to enable rigorous testing of these areas that led to the development of initial touchscreen prototypes. Ultimately, this resulted in publications that significantly impacted the field and enabled others to run these cognitive tests and paradigms and show the translatable capabilities of the system.

How have you seen the rodent touchscreen chambers develop over the years?

The touchscreen chamber has undergone a number of refinements in components and sensitivity since their initial prototypes, including changing from a square to trapezoidal wall structure, which really helped focus the animal’s attention and enable accurate and reliable measurements that these assays enable. As Jess mentions, it is important to continuously refine and modify these systems to ensure they are staying cutting edge and capturing the most appropriate and best measures accurately measure complex animal behavior.

What really drew her in was, “that we develop tests that capture the same cognitive constructs in humans. It’s really about how we boost translation. “

With the newest systems being able to integrate multiple chambers in a more seamless experimental design, the system’s continued improvements were built upon the original scientific foundation of standardization, reproducibility, and translation between animal and human cognitive study.

Can you tell us about the development of touchscreen chamber tasks?

Associate Professor Nithianantharajah drew inspiration from the goal of discerning how to develop tests that can measure the same cognitive constructs between rodents and humans.

“I think this is the key: It’s really about how we boost translation, and I think the touchscreen assays have very much addressed this fundamental need”

Once the core behavioral tasks were developed, a large community of global labs came together to develop additional tests corresponding with the original goal of measuring diverse cognitive constructs between rodents and humans. This investment resulted in a growing number of documented tools for labs to refine and use – which in turn improves comparison, reproducibility, and strengthens the link between animal research and human clinical study.

How easy is it for labs to get results with the touchscreen chambers?

Touchscreen chamber commercialization has resulted in the creation of a global tool. Through continued refinement, the system components have become plug and play – creating a better standardized and more accessible process for labs while lowering the hardware training requirements.

“It is very much plug-in and play – in the sense that the components are all ready to use for people, and I think that makes a huge difference. The nature of how they’re actually set up enables labs to be able to integrate those and hit the ground running.” 

The touchscreen system reduces the complexity of experiment setup freeing researchers to focus on the available data results. Furthermore, fundamental to this platform is the ability to bring together the touchscreen community and enable provide access to the technology, thorough training on data acquisition and interpretation. At the end of it, one of the most impactful things about this system is the sheer amount of data produced from the variety of tests it is capable of performing.

Please tell us more about your current research

Associate Professor Nithianantharajah’s research continues to rely on a variety of cognitive tests to connect to clinical domains.

“I have a personal interest in looking at psychiatric conditions particularly complex psychiatric conditions like depression and schizophrenia.”

In addition, her research has shown through integration with advanced recording tools such as optogenetics, cutting edge neuroscientific techniques can leverage the strong behavioral foundation provided by the touchscreen system. This integration is key to connecting behavior and neural activity in a structured environment.

How does touchscreen work help with mental health improvement?

The biggest challenge in mental health is how to develop a better treatment for individuals. Current treatments work but no treatment can be relied upon as a one-size-fits-all approach. One aspect of growing available treatment is strengthening of the connection between pre-clinical and clinical models.

“The translation of pre-clinical to clinical has been something that has been my deep passion, and this is where I think the touchscreen approach has been absolutely fundamental.”

Improving this translation can assist in treatment discovery, personalization, and accuracy. Ultimately, Associate Professor Nithianantharajah believes that, even in the next 10 years, we will see major updates in how the pre-clinical approach advances clinical translation.