LEVER PRESS

Nima

We aimed to train head-fixed mice to press a lever to get reward. Head-fixed surgery was done on three mice. After 24hr of water restriction, mice were trained to press a lever to receive water from a spout in front of their mouth. Training sessions were repeated every day for 5 days. At the same time, single-unit recording was obtained from the left and right motor cortex. We sought to use this data to predict the time of lever press from the activity in the contra- and ipsilateral motor cortex.

Left: Learning curve of a head-fixed mouse. By the end of the 5th session he learnt to press the lever to receive reward. Each experimental session took 40min.

Right: z-scored units locked to lever press in a 60 sec window. Each bin is 0.5 sec. Cell number 2 shows increased activity around the time of lever press.