Santiago, JaramilloSean, KyneBeth, McCarrySantiago, Jaramillo2021-07-272021-07-272021https://hdl.handle.net/1794/264701 page.Organisms are constantly exposed to sounds that provide cues about how to act in situations. The brain will rely on what it has heard in the past in order to make predictions about what it will hear next to improve behavioral responses. To investigate the neural basis of this process, we designed a training regimen teaching mice to detect when a sound changed. In this change detection task, mice were taught that a changing sound was associated with one lick port and an unchanging sound with another. To obtain the reward, mice needed to lick after the sound change or when the sound ended for sounds that didn’t change. Initially, we focused on teaching animals to lick at the appropriate time then they learned the association between changing and unchanging sounds. Data from this showed that animals developed a strong bias toward the port associated with changing sounds, presumably because animals could obtain rewards earlier on these trials compared to when the sound did not change. To address this issue, we used a buzzer to act as a negative reinforcement and indicate when the mouse licked the wrong port or at the wrong time. The buzzer was effective at eliminating port bias, allowing the animals to learn the correct associations. These results indicate that mice are capable of learning the task when appropriate training stages and reinforcements are used. This task will enable the investigation of the neural basis of change detection and predictions in the auditory system.application/pdfen-USCC0Presentationhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-0394-5248