en Cognitive Neuroscience Cognitive Neuroscience Original Original <div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:150%"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif"><b><span style="font-size:11.5pt"><span style="line-height:150%">Introduction:</span></span></b> <span style="font-size:11.5pt"><span style="line-height:150%">Decision-making in animal models is important in behavioral neuroscience. Animal versions of the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) are useful for studying choice under uncertainty and the conflict between immediate reward and long-term outcome. </span></span><span style="font-size:11.5pt"><span style="line-height:150%">Accurate implementation of such paradigms requires controlled behavioral systems. However, commercial systems are often expensive and depend on specialized parts. In addition, they usually offer limited repairability and flexibility.</span></span><span style="font-size:11.5pt"><span style="line-height:150%"> Therefore, this technical/methodological study aimed to design, construct, and functionally validate a low-cost, repairable, and locally constructible five-choice operant platform for the rat gambling task (rGT) as a representative decision-making paradigm, with potential adaptability to other five-choice-based behavioral tasks and compatibility with simultaneous electrophysiological recording.</span></span></span></span></span><br> <span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:150%"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif"><b><span style="font-size:11.5pt"><span style="line-height:150%">Methods:</span></span></b> <span style="font-size:11.5pt"><span style="line-height:150%">Based on a five-choice design, a custom operant chamber was developed. The system included LED- and infrared-equipped nose-poke holes, a reward magazine, an automatic pellet dispenser, a control unit, and a user-friendly MATLAB-based control interface. A rotary tether system was also designed for simultaneous LFP recording in freely moving animals. Behavioral events were synchronized with electrophysiological data by sending event markers from the microcontroller to the recording system. System performance was evaluated in male Wistar rats during a 60-minute rGT session by examining task execution, reward delivery, behavioral response recording, and synchronization of behavioral events with electrophysiological signals.</span></span></span></span></span><br> <span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:150%"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif"><b><span style="font-size:11.5pt"><span style="line-height:150%">Results: </span></span></b><span style="font-size:11.5pt"><span style="line-height:150%">The designed system allowed stable and accurate execution of the rGT, automatic recording of behavioral responses, controlled reward delivery, and temporal synchronization of behavioral data with electrophysiological signals. Behaviorally, animals showed a gradual increase in the percentage of advantageous choices during the session, suggesting within-session improvement in task performance. At the same time, clear inter-individual differences in performance were observed, with some animals reaching high levels of advantageous choice whereas others remained near chance level or showed low levels of advantageous choice by the end of the session. In addition, representative recordings showed that behavioral event markers could be precisely aligned with LFP signals.</span></span></span></span></span><br> <span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:150%"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif"><b><span style="font-size:11.5pt"><span style="line-height:150%">Conclusion: </span></span></b><span style="font-size:11.5pt"><span style="line-height:150%">The present system can be used as a practical, low-cost, repairable, and expandable alternative to commercial systems for performing the rat gambling task. In addition, its modular and flexible design allows adaptation for other five-choice-based behavioral paradigms and for combined behavioral and electrophysiological studies.</span></span></span></span></span></div> Decision-making, rat gambling task, operant chamber, five-choice, low-cost system, electrophysiology 0 0 http://bcn.iums.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-6125-4&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Elmira Ghasemi elmiraghasemi68@gmail.com 13700319475328460058407 13700319475328460058407 No School of Cognitive Sciences, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Tehran, Iran Nima Heidari nimaheydari68@gmail.com 13700319475328460058408 13700319475328460058408 No School of Cognitive Sciences, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Tehran, Iran Hossein Azizi azizih@modares.ac.ir 13700319475328460058409 13700319475328460058409 No Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran Saeed Semnanian ssemnan@modares.ac.ir 13700319475328460058410 13700319475328460058410 Yes Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran