The Five/nine-hole box from Bioseb is assembled with black methacrylate walls and a transparent front door. The box is equipped with an arc of 9 contiguous apertures set into the rear wall, a house light, a food pellet dispenser and a ‘pusher’ to detect the nose-pokes into the food holder. The holes not used in the experiment are blocked up using a metal insert. Each hole is equipped with photocell beams and internal LED providing visual cues specific to each hole. The intensity of the LED can be adjusted in the control unit using the digital selector. The box is placed on a stainless-steel platform and the associated tray is easily removable to clean animal excrements.

The nine-hole box is associated with the potent and versatile PackWin software in order to control the experiment (protocol configuration, experiment running) and obtain relevant data such as correct responses, incorrect responses, omissions, premature responses, perseverant responses, time out responses, total receptacle head entries, etc.

Different experimental paradigms for sustained attention, animal models of impulsive behaviour and lateralized-discrimination task can be conducted using the nine-hole box.

As an example, in the 5-choice serial reaction time task, short-lasting stimuli are given in pseudo-randomised order in one of the holes of the cage (commonly, hole 1, 3, 5, 7 or 9). If the animal nose-pokes into the correct hole, a reinforcement (pellet) is given. If the animal nose-pokes into an incorrect hole, a time-out period (no light) is given and next trial begins. The choice accuracy (% of correct responses) gives an idea of the functional integrity of the attention as well as learning processes. These parameters are mostly altered in animal models of schizophrenia and Alzheimer diseases.

2 models are available: LE-507 for mice and LE-509 for rats