Development and Validation of a Social Home Cage System for Rat Cognitive Testing: The Serotonin Case

This dissertation presents the development and validation of an automated social home-cage system for touchscreen-based cognitive testing in rats, designed to assess behavioural and cognitive development during adolescence. The system integrates RFID-based individual identification, automated access control, weight monitoring, and touchscreen testing within a socially housed environment, allowing longitudinal and minimally stressful assessment of cognitive performance. Using transgenic rat models characterized by reduced brain serotonin levels, the project investigates how serotonergic dysfunction influences cognitive flexibility, learning, and behavioural adaptation during adolescence. Validation experiments demonstrate reliable identification, stable behavioural measurements, and  cognitive task acquisition within the automated environment. Comparative analyses between knockout and wild-type animals reveal genotype-dependent differences in cognitive performance and behavioural profiles. The findings support the feasibility of automated, socially integrated cognitive testing paradigms and contribute to a deeper understanding of serotonin’s role in neurodevelopmental processes. This work provides both a validated methodological framework for home-cage cognitive assessment and new insights into the neurobiological mechanisms underlying adolescent brain development.