Behavioral neuroscience最新文献

Binge eating is a persistent behavior associated with a chronic course of illness and poor treatment outcomes. While clinical research is unable to capture the full course of binge eating, preclinical approaches offer the opportunity to examine binge-like eating from onset through chronic durations, allowing identification of factors contributing to binge eating persistence. The present study quantified the trajectories of binge-like eating onset and modeled cycles of abstinence/relapse to develop a translational model for binge eating persistence. Adult male and female C57Bl6/J mice were randomized to a binge-like palatable food access schedule (daily 2-hr, 3×/week) or continuous, nonbinge like palatable food access for 12 days (Experiment 1). Persistence of palatable food consumption in both binge-like palatable food access groups was then examined across three cycles of forced abstinence and reexposure to palatable food (incubation) to model the persistence of binge eating in clinical populations. Mice with daily 2-hr palatable food access escalated their intake more than mice in the 3×/week or continuous groups (Experiment 1). This pattern was more pronounced in females. In addition, this pattern of palatable food intake reemerged across multiple cycles of behavioral incubation (Experiment 2). These findings provide a model of binge-like eating in mice that can be used in future studies examining both environmental factors and neural mechanisms contributing to binge eating persistence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Interaction between Pavlovian and instrumental control systems is key for adaptive motivated behavior, but also plays an important role in various neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression, addiction, and anxiety. Here, we employed the flouorodopa positron emission tomography ([¹⁸F]-DOPA PET) in healthy participants (N = 100) to assess whether dopamine synthesis capacity (K_i), specifically in the ventral striatum, accounts for individual variation in Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT). Surprisingly, this was not the case. Rather, the relationship of ventral striatal Ki with PIT depended on working memory (WM) capacity. Ventral striatal dopamine boosted the effects of Pavlovian cues on instrumental responding to a greater degree in participants with higher WM capacity. Caution is warranted to interpret this post hoc four-way interaction given the modest sample size. Nonetheless, these results chime with prior findings demonstrating that dopaminergic drugs boost Pavlovian biases to a greater degree in participants with greater WM capacity and highlight the importance of interactions between striatal dopamine and WM capacity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Aggression is a complex social behavior that evolved in the context of defending a territory, fighting for limited resources, and competing for mates and protection. Although aggression considered as a negative or undesirable emotion is an essential part of many species' repertoire of social behaviors. For humans, the motivations, actions, and limits of aggressive acts are not always clear. However, uncontrolled aggression may have destructive consequences, and it develops inappropriately into violence. At the neural level, several studies demonstrated that aggression is related to cortical abnormalities, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). This review summarizes the state of the literature regarding the involvement of ACC in the neurobiology of aggression and impulsivity. We will first review structural and neuroanatomical studies, including volumetric and functional investigations of aggression. Next, we will discuss the neurochemical and neuropharmacological studies of aggression related to the ACC. We will focus mainly on the gamma-aminobutyric acid/glutamate balance, as well as the serotoninergic system. Finally, we will try to integrate these results and reconcile discrepancies in the field and suggest recommendations for future studies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

We showed previously in a mouse model of vascular cognitive impairment and dementia involving chronic cerebral hypoperfusion (CCH) that repetitive hypoxic conditioning (RHC) of both parents results in the epigenetic, intergenerational transmission of resilience to recognition memory loss in adult progeny, as assessed by the novel object recognition test. The present study was undertaken in the same model to determine whether RHC treatment of one or both parents is required to confer dementia resilience intergenerationally. We found inherited resilience to 3 months of CCH in males is maternally mediated (p = .006). Statistically, we observed a strong trend for the paternal germline to contribute as well (p = .052). We also found that, in contrast to what is widely observed in males, females display intact recognition memory (p = .001) after 3 months of CCH, revealing a heretofore unidentified sexual dimorphism with respect to cognitive impact during disease progression. Overall, results of our study strongly implicate epigenetic changes in maternal germ cells, induced by our repetitive systemic hypoxic stimulus, contributing to a modified differentiation program capable of establishing a dementia-resilient phenotype in adult male first-generation progeny. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Most people sample addictive drugs, but use becomes disordered in only a small minority. Two important factors that influence susceptibility to addiction are individual differences in personality traits and biological sex. The influence of traits on addiction-like behavior is well-characterized in preclinical models of cocaine self-administration, but less is understood in regards to opioids. How biological sex influences trait susceptibility to opioid self-administration is likewise less studied than psychostimulants. Thus, we sought to elucidate how biological sex and several addiction-relevant traits interact with the propensity to self-administer the opioid remifentanil. We first screened female (n = 19) and male (n = 19) rats for four addiction-relevant traits: impulsivity, novelty place-preference, anxiety-like behavior, and attribution of incentive value to reward cues. Rats were then trained to self-administer remifentanil in a "conflict model" of drug self-administration. Rats had to endure an electric shock to access the response manipulandum that triggered an intravenous infusion of remifentanil. In male rats, high anxiety-like behavior was positively correlated with the number of drug infusions if the shock level was low or completely absent. In females, sign-tracking was predictive of greater resistance to punishment during drug seeking; an effect that was mediated by anxiety-like behavior. Females consumed more remifentanil under all conditions, and their drug seeking persisted in the face of significantly greater current than males. These findings demonstrate that the influence of behavioral traits over the propensity to self-administer opioids is dependent upon biological sex. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Both the medial temporal lobe and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex have been implicated in learning and memory. However, it has been difficult to ascertain the degree to which the two structures are dependent on each other or interact in subserving these cognitive functions. To investigate this question directly, we prepared two group of monkeys. First, the contralateral frontal-hippocampal split group (CFHS) received a unilateral lesion of the hippocampus and surrounding posterior parahippocampal cortices (H +), combined with a contralateral lesion of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) plus transection of the corpus callosum and anterior commissure. This preparation functionally "disconnects" the remaining intact H + from the sole intact DLPFC in the opposite hemisphere. As a surgical control group, a second set of animals, the ipsilateral frontal-hippocampal split group, was prepared with a unilateral lesion of the DLPFC and an ipsilateral H + lesion together plus transection of the corpus callosum and anterior commissure. This preparation matches the locus and extent of damage in the cross-lesion group but allows the intact H + and intact DLPFC to interact ipsilaterally. Following recovery from surgery, all animals were then tested on the delayed nonmatching to sample task (DNMS), a test of recognition memory. The crossed-lesion split-brain group (CFHS) was markedly impaired on DNMS in both acquisition (rule learning) and performance over delays (recognition memory). The results provide evidence of a functionally dependent interaction between the medial temporal lobe and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in learning and memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Attention is biased toward stimuli previously associated with reward. The same is true for aversive conditioning; stimuli previously associated with an aversive outcome also bias attention, suggesting that motivational salience guides attention. Most research that supports this conclusion has manipulated monetary gain-a secondary reinforcer-for reward learning, and electric shocks-a primary punisher-for aversive conditioning, making it difficult to directly compare their influence on attention. Therefore, in the present study, we matched for reinforcer dimensions by using primary taste as reinforcers/punishers and assessed their influence on attention. In a training phase, participants learned to associate three colors with sweet juice (reward), salt water (aversive), and no outcome (neutral), respectively. The two primary reinforcers were equated for valence based on choices made in a prior decision-making task. In a later test phase, these three colors were used for targets and distractors in a task in which participants oriented to a shape-defined target. An attentional bias in favor of the aversively conditioned and reward-associated colors was evident when comparing to the neutral color. Importantly, a direct comparison of rewarded and aversive stimuli revealed no significant differences. These results suggest that when matched for reinforcer dimensions and valence, reward and aversive outcomes bias attention in a similar manner and their effects are comparable, providing further evidence in support of the motivational salience account of learning-dependent attention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Adolescence is a critical life period during which significant neurodevelopmental changes occur within the central nervous system. Consistently, substance abuse in this stage has been found to induce persistent changes in brain responsiveness to future drug challenges. Nowadays, heavy episodic alcohol consumption during adolescence, also known as binge-drinking behavior, is a growing concern in modern societies. On the other hand, alcohol is well known to act as a gateway drug, that is, it promotes the individual's craving for consumption of other drugs of abuse. With this in mind, we aimed to assess whether adolescent ethanol exposure could alter the development of tolerance and dependence to morphine, as an available common opioid drug. Tail flick test was used to measure thermal nociceptive changes in adult male Wistar rats undergone ethanol/vehicle exposure during adolescence. Furthermore, morphine withdrawal syndrome was induced by naloxone injection, and behavioral signs were recorded for 20 min. It was found that adolescent ethanol intake facilitates morphine analgesic tolerance and decreases baseline latency; however, the severity of dependence is not significantly altered. Moreover, we found that 15 days of treatment with omega-3 fatty acids (O3) prevents the mentioned ethanol-induced changes suggesting a therapeutic potential for this compound. O3 supplementation, as an inexpensive and noninvasive method, may assist the clinicians to reverse the adverse effect of alcohol binge drinking on adolescents' brains and to reduce the vulnerability to drug exposure in adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Humans and animals have to balance the need for exploring new options with exploiting known options that yield good outcomes. This tradeoff is known as the explore-exploit dilemma. To better understand the neural mechanisms underlying how humans and animals address the explore-exploit dilemma, a good animal behavioral model is critical. Most previous rodents explore-exploit studies used ethologically unrealistic operant boxes and reversal learning paradigms in which the decision to abandon a bad option is confounded by the need for exploring a novel option for information collection, making it difficult to separate different drives and heuristics for exploration. In this study, we investigated how rodents make explore-exploit decisions using a spatial navigation horizon task (Wilson et al., 2014) adapted to rats to address the above limitations. We compared the rats' performance to that of humans using identical measures. We showed that rats use prior information to effectively guide exploration. In addition, rats use information-driven directed exploration like humans, but the extent to which they explore has the opposite dependance on time horizon than humans. Moreover, we found that free choices and guided choices have different influences on exploration in rodents, a finding that has not yet been tested in humans. This study reveals that the explore-exploit spatial behavior of rats is more complex than previously thought. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).