Behavioral neuroscience最新文献

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).

Optimal levels of anxiety are critical to memory consolidation, but maladaptive anxiety can disrupt memory acquisition. Serotonergic activity within the amygdala influences both anxiety-like behavior and aversive memory consolidation. To evaluate the effects of serotoninergic manipulations within the basolateral amygdala (BLA) on anxiety-like behavior and aversive memory in rats tested in the plus-maze discriminative avoidance task (PMDAT). The PMDAT investigates aversive memory and anxiety-like behavior simultaneously in rodents. Three-month-old male Wistar rats received bilateral infusions (1 μL per side) of saline, 8-OH-DPAT (5-HT1 agonist; 10 nmol), WAY100135 (5-HT1 antagonist; 0.9 nmol), ketanserine (5-HT 2 antagonist; 10 nmol), or fluoxetine (serotonin reuptake inhibitor; 1.6 nmol) into the BLA and were submitted to PMDAT training session 15 min later. In the test, 24 hr later, animals were re-exposed to the apparatus without the infusion of drugs, and aversive memory was evaluated. (a) 8-OH-DPAT did not affect memory or anxiety, but impaired avoidance behavior toward the aversive arm during training; (b) fluoxetine, WAY100135 and ketanserin impaired memory formation; (c) ketanserin decreased anxiety-like behavior; and (d) none of the treatments induced motor changes. The results showed that an increase in serotonin (5-HT) availability or the blockade of 5HT1A and 5HT2A BLA receptors impaired aversive memory formation. However, only 5HT2A receptor antagonism induced anxiolytic effects. Thus, both memory and anxiety-like behavior can be modified by changes in serotonergic transmission in the basolateral amygdala, but the effects on both phenomena seem to be mediated by different mechanisms related to serotonergic transmission. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous studies have reported the importance of the precuneus in mediating metacognition and the prefrontal cortex in decision-making tasks. However, the mechanisms underlying metacognition remain to be fully elucidated. N-acetyl aspartate/creatine + phosphocreatine (NAA/Cr + PCr) is a putative neuronal marker level, which has been used in cognitive disorders. Long echo time proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy was used to further explore the metabolic correlates of metacognition. Metacognition was based on a self-reported questionnaire of nursing students. Magnetic resonance spectra of the bilateral precuneus and medial prefrontal cortex were recorded. A significant positive correlation was discovered between the total metacognitive score and academic performance (p = .007). The precuneus NAA/Cr + PCr ratios corresponded to metacognitive ability. Moreover, the correlation between precuneus NAA/Cr + PCr ratios and metacognitive ability was established for the right and not for the left precuneus. These findings further indicated that the right precuneal region plays an important role in metacognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Evidence suggests that single housing in rats acts as a chronic stressor, raising the possibilities that it contributes to measures of heroin craving and that pair housing ameliorates such measures. This study aimed to determine whether pair housing after heroin self-administration reduces the incubation of craving, extinction, and reinstatement of heroin seeking. Single-housed female and male Sprague-Dawley rats underwent daily 6-hr heroin self-administration, wherein active lever presses produced a heroin infusion paired with light/tone cues. One day after self-administration, rats underwent a baseline cued-seeking test wherein active lever presses only produced light/tone cues. Immediately following this cued-seeking test, rats were either pair-housed with weight- and sex-matched naïve rat or remained single-housed for the rest of the study. For 14 days, rats remained in their homecages, after which they underwent a cued-seeking test to assess the incubation of craving compared to their baseline test. Rats then underwent extinction sessions followed by cue-induced and heroin-primed reinstatements. The findings reveal that pair-housed rats did not differ from single-housed rats in terms of the incubation of craving, extinction, or reinstatement of heroin seeking. Additionally, the results did not reveal any evidence of sex-based differences in the study. The present work indicates that pair housing during the forced abstinence period does not alter measures of heroin craving/seeking. These findings suggest that the chronic stress of single housing specifically during forced abstinence does not contribute to the degree of such measures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

A previous study reported lateral habenula (LHb) lesions decelerated appetitive extinction. Therefore, we examined whether LHb activation accelerated appetitive extinction. In this study, rats received appetitive Pavlovian conditioning, pairing a conditioned stimulus (CS, light) with an unconditioned stimulus (food pellets), followed by CS-alone presentations. Chemogenetic LHb activation accelerated the decline in conditioned food-cup responses during extinction. The present results and the reports of previous LHb lesion studies suggest that LHb mediates appetitive extinction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

People are more likely to engage in various suboptimal behaviors such as overeating, addictive behaviors, and short-sighted financial decision-making when they are under stress. Traditional dual-process models propose that stress can impair the ability to engage in goal-directed behavior so that people have to rely on habitual behavior. Support for this idea comes from a study by Schwabe and Wolf (2010), in which stressed participants continued to perform a learned instrumental behavior leading to a liquid after the liquid was devalued with a satiation procedure. Based on these findings, suboptimal behavior under stress is often seen as habitual. In the present study, we conducted a conceptual replication of the study by Schwabe and Wolf (2010). Instead of using a satiation procedure to achieve the outcome devaluation, we devalued outcomes through taste aversion. We did not replicate the pattern of findings by Schwabe and Wolf (2010). Our results indicate instead that stressed participants were sensitive to outcome values when the outcomes became truly aversive and hence that their behavior was goal-directed. This suggests either that (a) habitual processes are subject to boundary conditions or (b) the processes responsible for the findings of Schwabe and Wolf (2010) were never habitual to begin with. This may have far-reaching implications for explaining suboptimal behavior under stress in general. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The nociceptin/orphanin FQ receptor (NOP receptor) has wide expression in the nervous system and is involved in neurotransmitter release. However, the role of the NOPR in depression is not widely recognized. This study aims to evaluate behavioral and biochemical effects of the NOPR agonist Ro 65-6570 in mice submitted to social defeat protocol. The open-field test, social interaction test, and tail suspension test were applied to evaluate depressive behavior in male Swiss mice. Blood and brain tissue samples were obtained to evaluate the oxidative stress. The NOP agonist, Ro 65-6570 (1 mg/kg), or the social defeat stress reduced exploration rate in the open-field test. The social defeat stress and/or the NOP agonist also increased immobility time in the tail suspension test and the grooming time, as well as reduced the social interaction on the last day of social defeat protocol. Seven days after the end of the protocol, only the drug alone was able to affect the animals' interaction. Additionally, the NOP agonist increased the concentration of carbonyl groups (CGs) in hippocampus and malondialdehyde in serum. The stress of social defeat and the NOP agonist, together, increased malondialdehyde in animals' serum and prefrontal cortex, as well as increased the CGs concentration in the prefrontal cortex. These findings indicate a chronic depressive effect induced by the NOPR activation, sometimes regardless of the social defeat stress. We suggest that the NOPR signaling can activate pathways involved in cellular oxidative stress, contributing to the depression pathology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).