pubmed-article:12373417 | pubmed:abstractText | In studies assessing sustained attention in humans, performance is often characterised by a decline in function over time. This response pattern, termed the vigilance decrement, is sensitive to manipulations affecting task difficulty, and to reversal with psychostimulant drugs. A valid test of attention in non-human species requires both comparable characteristics of performance, and sensitivity to similar psychoactive drugs. The five-choice serial reaction time task (5-CSRTT) has been described as a test of sustained attention in the rat, however, studies describing vigilance decrements and performance effects of psychostimulants in this task are scarce. | lld:pubmed |