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Differential effects of forebrain 5-hydroxytryptamine depletions on Pavlovian aversive conditioning to discrete and contextual stimuli in the rat.

The experiments examined the effects of depleting forebrain 5-hydroxytryptamine (5HT) on Pavlovian aversive conditioning to discrete and contextual stimuli. Rats were lesioned with intracerebroventricular injections of the neurotoxin 5,7-dihydroxytryptamine and then conditioned in a distinctive environment (termed the context) to a 30 s auditory stimulus. In 50% of animals the interval between the offset of the discrete auditory stimulus and the reinforcer, a mild foot-shock (0.5 mA, 0.5 s), was 5 s (the short-trace group) and in the other 50%, 30 s (the long-trace group). Theory predicts that animals in the short-trace condition will learn more about the discrete stimulus as a predictor of shock and become strongly conditioned, while those in the long-trace condition learn relatively more about the context. The extent of conditioning to the discrete and contextual stimuli was assessed separately, in extinction, using lick-suppression and place-preference measures respectively. Under these conditions sham subjects exhibited the expected dissociation with respect to trace interval. However, lesioned animals exhibited a specific impairment in contextual conditioning. The results are discussed in terms of the behavioural, neurochemical and neuroanatomical specificity of 5HT function in aversive conditioning and the implications for general theories of the role of 5HT in aversive processes.

Animals↗

Classical conditioning after temporal lobe lesions in man: impairment in conditional discrimination.

Left and right temporal lobectomy patients, patients with frontal lobe lesions, and healthy control subjects participated in an eyelid conditioning study based on conditional discrimination learning. All groups acquired the first conditioned response at a similar time during learning, but both temporal lobectomy groups showed poorer discrimination than control subjects. The results support models that relate hippocampal function to operation of if-then rules.

Adult↗

Learning and unlearning fear: a clinical and evolutionary perspective.

Many fears, phobias and rituals seem to arise from prepared phylogenetic mechanisms which favor old over new evolutionary dangers and affect the rules of aversive learning which govern the acquisition of fear. Recent developments in several forms of aversive learning (sensitization, conditioning, extinction, observational learning) can improve them as paradigms of the acquisition, spread and maintenance of normal and clinical fears. The most reliable treatment for phobias and rituals is exposure, whose effects closely parallel the habituation of normal defensive responses and the extinction of conditioned fear and avoidance in animals. Habituation during exposure is usually slow and step by step, and generalizes little, but once attained tends to endure. Conditioned fear extinction and fear habituation have similar courses and may depend on similar neural processes. To be reduced, avoidance has to be prevented or the safety intervals that it heralds must be given up. Some phobias may result less from enhanced acquisition than from insufficient exposure to attain habituation. Finally, the review discusses the limits of habituation and the instability of fear extinction in relation to the long-term efficacy of exposure therapy.

Animals↗

Drug-preexposure effects in flavor-aversion learning: associative interference by conditioned environmental stimuli.

Previous research has documented that exposure to a drug reduces the ability of the drug to support subsequent flavor-aversion learning. The four experiments reported here examined the hypothesis that this drug-preexposure effect is due to associative interference from environmental stimuli associated with the drug effects during preexposure. When distinctive environmental stimuli (confinement in a black compartment) were present during drug preexposure, these stimuli significantly disrupted subsequent flavor-aversion learning. Furthermore, flavor conditioning was not significantly disrupted when drug preexposure occurred in the absence of salient environmental stimuli or when the previously conditioned environmental stimuli were extinguished prior to flavor conditioning. It is significant, and in contrast to other published research, that flavor conditioning was not disrupted when the distinctive cues paired with the drug during preexposure were absent at the time of the flavor-drug pairing. These results are thus consistent with results from conventional studies of stimulus blocking and suggest that associative processes can play a major role in the drug-preexposure effect.

Animals↗

Restrained rats learn amphetamine-conditioned locomotion, but not place preference.

The relationship between the motor-activating and positive-reinforcing properties of d-amphetamine was examined in the place-preference paradigm. Two groups of animals were trained to associate one environment with amphetamine, and another environment with saline. Animals that were allowed to locomote in both environments during training later demonstrated a preference for the amphetamine-paired environment; animals in which hyperactivity was limited in both environments later failed to show any preference. However, both groups of animals demonstrated a conditioned locomotor activation to the amphetamine-associated environments. Our results suggest that a place-preference demonstrated for an amphetamine-paired environment depends on the ability of the drug to increase locomotor behavior.

Animals↗

Absence of environment-specificity in morphine tolerance acquired in non-distinctive environments: habituation or stimulus overshadowing?

The experiments reported here investigated the mechanisms of drug tolerance acquisition in environments differing in distinctiveness. Specifically, they examined the hypothesis that tolerance acquired in non-distinctive environments might involve habituation while tolerance acquired in distinctive environments involves a classical conditioning or associative learning mechanism. In Experiment 1, rats pre-exposed to injection-ritual cues (placebo injections) prior to acquisition of tolerance to morphine analgesia in distinctive or non-distinctive environments showed a typically attenuated tolerance response on an environment-change test. The magnitude of the attenuation was not affected by the distinctiveness of the acquisition environment. In Experiment 2, rats acquiring tolerance in distinctive or non-distinctive environments, but without prior injection-ritual pre-exposure, did not demonstrate an attenuation of tolerance on an environment-change test. Tolerance acquired in either environment was unaffected by a subsequent rest period in the colony room, but was attenuated by a subsequent period of daily placebo injections in the colony room. It is argued that failure to observe environment-specific tolerance, as in Experiment 2 and in previous reports in the literature, may reflect overshadowing of environmental stimuli by injection-ritual stimuli, and are not indicative of a fundamental difference between the mechanisms of tolerance acquisition in environments varying in distinctiveness.

Analysis of Variance↗

Effects of intra-amygdala R(+) 7-OH-DPAT on intra-accumbens d-amphetamine-associated learning. I. Pavlovian conditioning.

We have previously obtained evidence that the mesoamygdaloid dopamine projection modulates the acquisition of a conditioned response (CR) elicited by presentation of a conditioned stimulus (CS) predicting the availability of a natural (sucrose) reward. This property was found to be dependent upon D3, but not D1 or D2, dopamine receptor activation. The aim of the present study was to determine whether the mesoamygdaloid dopamine projection is similarly involved in the acquisition of a drug-associated CR. Thus, two groups of rats with guide cannulae aimed at the nucleus accumbens and amygdala were trained using a Pavlovian conditioning procedure in which an initially neutral CS was paired with a computer-controlled, bilateral intraaccumbens infusion of d-amphetamine (the unconditioned stimulus: US). Conditioning sessions were conducted in standard operant chambers, with each session consisting of a single CS-US trial. For one group of rats, CS presentation was positively correlated with the drug US (Paired group), while for the second group CS and US presentations were negatively correlated (Unpaired group). During training, locomotor activity was recorded and was utilised as the measure both of the unconditioned (UR) and conditioned response (CR). A within-subjects design was utilised to investigate the effect of post-session bilateral intraamygdala administration of R(+) 7-OH-DPAT on the development of the drug-associated CR. Hence, both Paired and Unpaired groups were exposed to two different CSs which were presented on alternate sessions. Post-session bilateral intra-amygdala administration of R(+) 7-OH-DPAT (10 nmol) followed sessions in which one CS was presented, while intra-amygdala vehicle followed sessions in which the alternate CS was presented. The development of a CR occurred only in the presence of a CS that had been positively correlated with presentation of the drug US. Post-session, intra-amygdala administration of R(+) 7-OH-DPAT enhanced the acquisition of this CR. However, R(+) 7-OH-DPAT was without effect upon the unconditioned response to intra-accumbens d-amphetamine. Our previous data indicate a comparable effect of R(+) 7-OH-DPAT on conditioning to a CS associated with a non-drug, natural reward. Therefore, taken together, these findings suggest that D3 dopamine receptors within the amygdala modulate specifically the acquisition of Pavlovian conditioned responses, regardless of whether drug or natural rewards constitute the US.

Amygdala↗

Conditioned taste aversion: a database.

The present commentary describes the availability of a database on conditioned taste aversion learning, the avoidance of fluids and foods previously associated with the aversive effects of a variety of drugs. The database includes articles as early as 1955 by Garcia and his colleagues [Science 122 (1955) 127] (reporting such avoidance in rats) and papers just published given that the database is ongoing and constantly updated. At the printing of this announcement, approximately 2600 papers are included in the database. The database allows the user to search for articles by author(s), key word(s), date, title and journal. These terms can be used as single entries or multiple combinations. Finally, the full database can be viewed by performing the search function without entering any terms in the query window. The database can be accessed at http://www.CTALearning.com.

Animals↗

Design considerations for adult patient education.

A variety of factors require attention in the design of patient education programs for adults. Andragogy, the art and science of helping adults learn, describes certain conditions of learning that are more conducive to growth and development for adults and prescribes practices in the learning-teaching transaction to meet them. Stigma, a special discrepancy between virtual and actual social identity, reduces a patient's self-esteem and fosters a feeling of dependence on others for care. Anxiety related to diagnosis and illness creates a situation in which patients cannot productively learn. The stages in acceptance of diagnosis provide a roadmap for understanding a patient's feelings/psychological processes and insight into opportunities to intervene with patient education. The specific disease a patient has effects his ability to learn. Each of these factors is considered with implications described for designing and implementing patient education activities for adults.

Adult↗

From conditioning to category learning: an adaptive network model.

We used adaptive network theory to extend the Rescorla-Wagner (1972) least mean squares (LMS) model of associative learning to phenomena of human learning and judgment. In three experiments subjects learned to categorize hypothetical patients with particular symptom patterns as having certain diseases. When one disease is far more likely than another, the model predicts that subjects will substantially overestimate the diagnosticity of the more valid symptom for the rare disease. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 provide clear support for this prediction in contradistinction to predictions from probability matching, exemplar retrieval, or simple prototype learning models. Experiment 3 contrasted the adaptive network model with one predicting pattern-probability matching when patients always had four symptoms (chosen from four opponent pairs) rather than the presence or absence of each of four symptoms, as in Experiment 1. The results again support the Rescorla-Wagner LMS learning rule as embedded within an adaptive network model.

Association Learning↗