Investigating Serotonergic Contributions to Cognitive Effort Allocation, Attention, and Impulsive Action in Female Rats

Background: Individuals must frequently evaluate whether it is worth allocating cognitive effort for desired outcomes. Motivational deficits are a common feature of psychiatric illness such as major depression. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are commonly used to treat this disorder, yet some data suggest these compounds are ineffective at treating amotivation, and may even exacerbate it.

Aims: Here we used the rodent Cognitive Effort Task (rCET) to assess serotonergic (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) contributions to decision-making with cognitive effort costs.

Methods: The rCET is a modified version of the 5-choice serial reaction time task, a well-validated test of visuospatial attention and impulse control. At the start of each rCET trial, rats chose one of two levers, which set the difficulty of an attentional challenge, namely the localization of a visual stimulus illuminated for 0.2 or 1 s on hard versus easy trials. Successful completion of hard trials was rewarded with double the sugar pellets. Twenty-four female Long-Evans rats were trained on the rCET and systemically administered the 5-HT agonist 8-OH-DPAT, the 5-HT antagonist M100907, the 5-HT agonist Ro-60-0175, as well as the 5-HT antagonist SB 242, 084.

Results: 5-HT antagonism dose-dependently reduced premature responding, while 5-HT antagonism had the opposite effect. 8-OH-DPAT impaired accuracy of target detection at higher doses, while Ro-60-0175 dose-dependently improved accuracy on difficult trials. However, none of the drugs affected the rats' choice of the harder option.

Conclusion: When considered with existing work evaluating decision-making with physical effort costs, it appears that serotonergic signalling plays a minor role in guiding effort allocation.