Data from: A within-animal comparison of skilled forelimb assessments in rats

A variety of skilled reaching tasks have been developed to evaluate
forelimb function in rodent models. The single pellet skilled reaching
task and pasta matrix task have provided valuable insight into recovery of
forelimb function in models of neurological injury and disease. Recently,
several automated measures have been developed to reduce the cost and time
burden of forelimb assessment in rodents. Here, we provide a
within-subject comparison of three common forelimb assessments to allow
direct evaluation of sensitivity and efficiency across tasks. Rats were
trained to perform the single pellet skilled reaching task, the pasta
matrix task, and the isometric pull task. Once proficient on all three
tasks, rats received an ischemic lesion of motor cortex and striatum to
impair use of the trained limb. On the second week post-lesion, all three
tasks measured a significant deficit in forelimb function. Performance was
well-correlated across tasks. By the sixth week post-lesion, only the
isometric pull task measured a significant deficit in forelimb function,
suggesting that this task is more sensitive to chronic impairments. The
number of training days required to reach asymptotic performance was
longer for the isometric pull task, but the total experimenter time
required to collect and analyze data was substantially lower. These
findings suggest that the isometric pull task represents an efficient,
sensitive measure of forelimb function to facilitate preclinical
evaluation in models of neurological injury and disease.