PubMed · 14488554
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N V PRAZNIKOVA. 1962. [Retarding conditioned reflexes in fish].. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14488554/
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The ability to use environmental stimuli to predict impending harm is critical for survival. Such predictions should be available as early as they are reliable. In pavlovian conditioning, chains of successively earlier predictors are studied in terms of higher-order relationships, and have inspired computational theories such as temporal difference learning. However, there is at present no adequate neurobiological account of how this learning occurs. Here, in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of higher-order aversive conditioning, we describe a key computational strategy that humans use to learn predictions about pain. We show that neural activity in the ventral striatum and the anterior insula displays a marked correspondence to the signals for sequential learning predicted by temporal difference models. This result reveals a flexible aversive learning process ideally suited to the changing and uncertain nature of real-world environments. Taken with existing data on reward learning, our results suggest a critical role for the ventral striatum in integrating complex appetitive and aversive predictions to coordinate behaviour.
Research on classical conditioning with drug unconditional stimuli has had a profound effect on the understanding of general conditioning processes. The experiment reported by R. V. McDonald and S. Siegel (see record 2004-10475-001) demonstrates that cues coincident with the onset of an event can become associated with the rest of the event. This sort of learning is probably ubiquitous and has been proposed as a mechanism behind the development of panic disorder, in which interoceptive cues coincident with the start of a panic attack can be associated with the rest of the attack and can eventually come to elicit full-blown panic on their own. Evidence that extinction exposure to early onset cues can reduce their power is especially important. Drug conditioning research continues to provide a powerful testing ground for important general principles of learning.
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