Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience, Rowan-Virtua School of Translational Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, Virtua Health College of Medicine and Life Sciences of Rowan University, Stratford, NJ, United States; Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine, Virtua Health College of Medicine and Life Sciences of Rowan University, Stratford, NJ, United States.
Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience, Rowan-Virtua School of Translational Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, Virtua Health College of Medicine and Life Sciences of Rowan University, Stratford, NJ, United States; Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine, Virtua Health College of Medicine and Life Sciences of Rowan University, Stratford, NJ, United States.
Behav Brain Res. 2025 Feb 4;477:115317. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2024.115317. Epub 2024 Oct 28.
Goal-directed and habitual-like behaviors are both necessary to efficiently and effectively navigate the environment. A dysregulation between these behaviors can lead to an overreliance on habitual-like behaviors and may contribute to symptoms experienced in some neuropsychiatric disorders such as substance use disorder. One behavioral task used to evaluate goal-directed and habitual-like behavior is an action-outcome task, contingency degradation, where an action (i.e., lever press) is degraded by decoupling the receipt of a reward from the action. However, little is known about how male and female rats and females across the estrous cycle respond during contingency degradation training and extinction testing. Here, we investigated how the variable of sex and estrous cycle influences contingency degradation training and extinction testing and the correlation between baseline anxiety-like behaviors and performance on contingency degradation extinction testing in adult male and female Long-Evans rats. We found that both males and females learned the contingency degradation task. However, during extinction testing, males respond more to the contingent lever than the non-contingent lever while females do not differ in their responses on the non-contingent and contingent levers. Lower baseline anxiety-like behavior predicted better performance on the contingency degradation test in males, but not females. Next, when we examined performance during extinction testing in females based on their estrous cycle stage on test day, we found that females in the proestrus and estrus stages of the estrous cycle do not differ in their responses on the non-contingent and contingent levers, while females in the metestrus and diestrus stages of the estrous cycle respond more on the contingent lever than the non-contingent lever on the extinction test day, similar to male rats. Our findings indicate that the estrous cycle influences how female rats respond during contingency degradation extinction testing that is dependent on their estrous cycle stage.
目标导向和习惯样行为对于有效地在环境中导航都是必要的。这些行为之间的失调可能导致对习惯样行为的过度依赖，并可能导致一些神经精神障碍（如物质使用障碍）中出现的症状。评估目标导向和习惯样行为的一种行为任务是行为-结果任务，即连续消退，其中通过使奖励与动作脱钩来降低动作（即压杆）的作用。然而，人们对雄性和雌性大鼠以及发情周期内的雌性大鼠在连续消退训练和消退测试中的反应知之甚少。在这里，我们研究了性别和发情周期的变量如何影响连续消退训练和消退测试，以及成年雄性和雌性长耳大鼠基线焦虑样行为与连续消退测试表现之间的相关性。我们发现，雄性和雌性都学会了连续消退任务。然而，在消退测试中，雄性对条件性杠杆的反应比对非条件性杠杆的反应更多，而雌性对非条件性和条件性杠杆的反应没有差异。较低的基线焦虑样行为预测雄性在连续消退测试中的表现更好，但对雌性则不然。接下来，当我们根据测试日的发情周期阶段检查雌性在消退测试中的表现时，我们发现处于发情周期的发情前期和发情期的雌性在非条件性和条件性杠杆上的反应没有差异，而处于发情周期的发情后期和发情后期的雌性在消退测试日对条件性杠杆的反应比对非条件性杠杆的反应更多，类似于雄性大鼠。我们的研究结果表明，发情周期会影响雌性大鼠在连续消退测试中的反应方式，这取决于它们的发情周期阶段。
