Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Mar;68(1):61-70.
doi: 10.1007/s40732-018-0268-1. Epub 2018 Feb 26.

Pair Housing Alters Delay Discounting in Lewis and Fischer 344 Rats

Marissa Turturici  1 , Jenny E Ozga  1 , Karen G Anderson  1
Affiliations

Pair Housing Alters Delay Discounting in Lewis and Fischer 344 Rats

Marissa Turturici et al. Psychol Rec. 2018 Mar.

Abstract

Impulsive choice underlies several psychological disorders and can be assessed in laboratory rats using delay-discounting tasks, in which choice is for either one food pellet immediately or three food pellets after a delay. Choice for the smaller, immediate reinforcer is considered the impulsive choice. Lewis (LEW) and Fischer 344 (F344) rats differ in the number of impulsive choices made during this task when singly housed, with LEW choosing the impulsive option more often. Due to increasing recommendations to provide environmental enrichment as a component of animal-husbandry practices, a systematic replication of two previous studies was conducted using pair-housed LEW and F344. Delay discounting was assessed with pair-housed LEW and F344 and compared to previous data from singly housed LEW and F344 collected from the same laboratory. Results showed that differences in impulsive choice between the two strains were attenuated with pair housing. The main result driving this change appears to be an increase in impulsive choice in pair-housed F344 relative to singly housed F344.

Keywords: Delay discounting; Fischer 344 rat; Housing; Impulsive choice; Lewis rat.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Compliance with Ethical Standards Conflict of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Both panels depict the same data set in different ways for ease of interpretation. a Mean IPs for F344 (solid squares) and LEW (crossed squares) for singly housed and pair-housed groups. Error bars represent standard error of the mean. b Mean IPs for LEW (striped bars) and F344 (solid bars) rats. Filled points represent data from individual rats. Error bars represent standard error of the mean
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Individual and mean (bars) log-transformed IPs for each group. Pairwise comparisons that were statistically significant between groups prior to including delay series as a covariate are represented by the asterisks and indicate p < .01
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Ainslie G (1975). Specious reward: a behavioral theory of impulsiveness and impulse control. Psychological Bulletin, 82, 463–496. 10.1037/h0076860. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Alessi SM, & Petry NM (2003). Pathological gambling severity is associated with impulsivity in a delay discounting procedure. Behavioural Processes, 64, 345–354. 10.1016/S0376-6357(03)00150-5. - DOI - PubMed
    1. American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.
    1. Anderson KG, & Diller JW (2010). Effects of acute and repeated nicotine administration on delay discounting in Lewis and Fischer 344 rats. Behavioural Pharmacology, 21, 754–764. 10.1097/FBP.0b013e328340a050. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Anokhin AP, Golosheykin S, Grant JD, & Heath AC (2011). Heritability of delay discounting in adolescence: a longitudinal twin study. Behavior Genetics, 41(2), 175–183. 10.1007/s10519-010-9384-7. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources