Olshavsky Megan E, Shumake Jason, Rosenthal Alek A, Kaddour-Djebbar Amine, Gonzalez-Lima F, Setlow Barry, Lee Hongjoo J
The University of Texas at Austin.
J Exp Anal Behav. 2014 Sep;102(2):162-78. doi: 10.1002/jeab.104. Epub 2014 Aug 17.
When a neutral cue is followed by a significant event such as food delivery, some animals become engaged with the cue itself and acquire cue-directed behaviors. One type of cue-directed behavior is observed following insertion of a lever used as a conditioned stimulus (CS). Rats showing robust approach behavior to the lever also display impulsivity and altered attention, as compared to rats showing behavior directed toward the reward delivery location. The current study used a light CS to categorize rats' propensity for cue-directed behavior, and assessed whether individual differences in impulsivity and related behaviors still emerged. During the light-food pairings, some rats displayed enhanced rearing or orienting to the light (Orienters) prior to showing food cup approach behavior, while other rats only showed food cup approach behavior (Nonorienters). Our results showed that Orienters made more impulsive and risky decisions in two different choice tasks, and were quicker to leave a familiar dark environment to enter a novel bright field. Orienters also showed less accurate target detection when a visual distractor was introduced during an attentional challenge. Our current study suggests that light CS-induced rearing/orienting behavior might not necessarily share an identical mechanism with lever CS-approach behavior in predicting impulsivity-related behaviors.
当中性线索之后出现诸如提供食物之类的重大事件时，一些动物会开始关注该线索本身并习得线索导向行为。在插入用作条件刺激（CS）的杠杆后，会观察到一种线索导向行为。与表现出朝向奖励投放位置行为的大鼠相比，对杠杆表现出强烈趋近行为的大鼠也表现出冲动性和注意力改变。本研究使用灯光作为条件刺激来对大鼠的线索导向行为倾向进行分类，并评估冲动性及相关行为的个体差异是否仍然存在。在灯光与食物配对过程中，一些大鼠在表现出接近食杯行为之前，对灯光表现出增强的直立或定向反应（定向者），而其他大鼠只表现出接近食杯行为（非定向者）。我们的结果表明，定向者在两项不同的选择任务中做出了更冲动和冒险的决策，并且更快地离开熟悉的黑暗环境进入新的明亮区域。在注意力挑战中引入视觉干扰物时，定向者的目标检测准确性也较低。我们目前的研究表明，灯光条件刺激引发的直立/定向行为在预测冲动性相关行为方面，可能不一定与杠杆条件刺激引发的趋近行为具有相同的机制。
