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Enrichment in rodents affects brain structure, improves behavioral performance, and is neuroprotective. Similarly, in humans, according to the cognitive reserve concept, enriched experience is functionally protective against neuropathology. Despite this parallel, the ability to translate rodent studies to human clinical situations is limited. This limitation is likely due to the simple cognitive processes probed in rodent studies and the inability to control, with existing methods, the degree of rodent engagement with enrichment material. We overcome these two difficulties with behavioral tasks that probe, in a fine-grained manner, aspects of higher-order cognition associated with deterioration with aging and dementia, and a new enrichment protocol, the ‘Obstacle Course’ (OC), which enables controlled enrichment delivery, respectively. Together, these two advancements will enable better specification (and comparisons) of …