The Training Village: an open platform for continuous testing of rodents in cognitive tasks

Abstract

The development of new methods for dissecting neural circuits in rodents promises to transform the study of higher-order cognitive functions. However, the adaptation of complex cognitive tasks from humans to rodents remains very limited as these tasks require long periods of animal training with significant researcher expertise and effort. Multi-box setups can mitigate the problem but remain labor-intensive and costly to maintain. Newly developed home cage training systems, while minimizing costs, are limited to specific conditions and tasks. Here, we present the Training Village (TV), an open-source, affordable, and fully automated system for continuous rodent training. In the TV, a group of rodents lives in enriched arenas while individually accessing an operant box at any time. The system provides personalized training, continuous monitoring of task performance and home cage activity, and real-time remote supervision. Its graphical interface and modular design make it user-friendly and easy to integrate with other behavioral systems running a wide range of cognitive paradigms. We validated the TV across multiple tasks and cohorts of mice and rats, demonstrating efficient operant box usage, stable long-term task engagement, and its potential to link home cage behavior with task performance. Overall, the TV is an easy-to-adopt platform that can greatly accelerate brain research by fully automating rodent training in complex cognitive tasks.