Response-specificity or response-generality of inhibition in an operant feature-negative discrimination: Influence of the amount of inhibition training and attention to the response.

The suppression of behavior that occurs in instrumental extinction is strikingly specific to the response. In contrast, Steinfeld and Bouton (2022) recently reported that inhibition developing in an operant feature-negative (FN) discrimination is not specific to the response. In two experiments, we tested two potential explanations of why inhibition in FN learning is relatively response-general.

Physician Associate/Assistant Program Medical Directors Are Important Advocates for the Physician Associate/Assistant Profession: Results From a National Pilot Study.

Introduction: This pilot study aimed to evaluate whether and how physician associate/assistant (PA) program medical directors play a role in advocating on behalf of PAs and what factors correlate with this.

Methods: The study used a mixed-methods grounded theory approach and was deemed institutional review board exempt. After literature review, a survey was developed and piloted by study personnel and faculty to affirm validity.

Cylindroma of the Breast: A Rare Differential for Breast Cancer on Core Biopsies, Case Report and Review of Literature.

Breast cancers of either ductal or lobular pathology make up the vast majority of breast malignancies. Other cancers occur rarely in the breast. Benign pathology can at times mimic breast cancers on imaging and initial needle biopsies.

An analysis of reinstatement after extinction of a conditioned taste aversion.

Taste aversion learning has sometimes been considered a specialized form of learning. In several other conditioning preparations, after a conditioned stimulus (CS) is conditioned and extinguished, reexposure to the unconditioned stimulus (US) by itself can reinstate the extinguished conditioned response. Reinstatement has been widely studied in fear and appetitive Pavlovian conditioning, as well as operant conditioning, but its status in taste aversion learning is more controversial.

Infralimbic cortex plays a similar role in the punishment and extinction of instrumental behavior.

Learning to stop responding is a fundamental process in instrumental learning. Animals may learn to stop responding under a variety of conditions that include punishment-where the response earns an aversive stimulus in addition to a reinforcer-and extinction-where a reinforced response now earns nothing at all. Recent research suggests that punishment and extinction may be related manifestations of a common retroactive interference process.

Chemogenetic inhibition of the ventral hippocampus but not its direct projection to the prelimbic cortex attenuates context-specific operant responding.

Previous work has demonstrated the importance of the prelimbic cortex (PL) in contextual control of operant behavior. However, the associated neural circuitry responsible for providing contextual information to the PL is not well understood. In Pavlovian fear conditioning the ventral hippocampus (vH) and its projection to the PL have been shown to be important in supporting the effects of context on learning.

Habit and persistence.

Voluntary behaviors (operants) can come in two varieties: Goal-directed actions, which are emitted based on the remembered value of the reinforcer, and habits, which are evoked by antecedent cues and performed without the reinforcer's value in active memory. The two are perhaps most clearly distinguished with the reinforcer-devaluation test: Goal-directed actions are suppressed when the reinforcer is separately devalued and responding is tested in extinction, and habitual behaviors are not. But what is the function of habit learning? Habits are often thought to be strong and unusually persistent.

Prelimbic cortex inactivation prevents ABA renewal based on stress state.

Our recent research suggests that the interoceptive state associated with stress can function as a contextual stimulus for operant behavior. In the present experiment, we investigated the role of the rodent prelimbic cortex (PL), a brain region that is critical in contextual control of operant behavior, in the ability of a stressed state to produce ABA renewal of an extinguished operant response. Rats were trained to perform a lever press response for a food pellet reward during daily sessions that followed exposure to a stressor that changed each day.

Response-specific effects of punishment of a discriminated operant response.

To determine whether the punishment of a discriminated operant behavior has effects that are specific to the punished response, rats were reinforced for performing two different instrumental responses (lever pressing and chain pulling) in the presence of a single discriminative stimulus (S). They were then either punished with mild footshock for performing one of the responses (R1) in S, or they received the same shocks in a noncontingent manner while performing R1 in S (i.e.

Early-life seizures alter habit behavior formation and fronto-striatal circuit dynamics.

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) can occur comorbidly with epilepsy; both are complex, disruptive disorders that lower quality of life. Both OCD and epilepsy are disorders of hyperexcitable circuits, but it is unclear whether common circuit pathology may underlie the co-occurrence of these two neuropsychiatric disorders. Here, we induced early-life seizures (ELS) in rats to examine habit formation as a model for compulsive behaviors.

The under-appreciated world of the serpin family of serine proteinase inhibitors.

In the practice of medicine, many fundamental biological pathways that require tight on/off control, such as inflammation and circulatory homeostasis, are regulated by serine proteinases, but we rarely consider the unique protease inhibitors that, in turn, regulate these proteases. The serpins are a family of proteins with a shared tertiary structure, whose members largely act as serine protease inhibitors, found in all forms of life, ranging from viruses, bacteria, and archaea to plants and animals. These proteins represent up to 2-10% of proteins in the human blood and are the third most common protein family.

Prelimbic cortex inactivation prevents ABA renewal based on satiety state.

We have previously shown that the rat prelimbic cortex (PL) is necessary for contexts to promote the performance of instrumental behaviors that have been learned in them, whether the context is physical (operant chamber) or behavioral (recent performance of a behavior that has historically preceded the target in a behavior chain). In the present experiment, we investigated the role of the PL in satiety level as an interoceptive acquisition context. Rats were trained to lever-press for sweet/fat pellets while sated (22 hrs continuous food access) followed by the extinction of the response while hungry (22 hrs food deprived).

Characteristics of highly prolific PA authors who contributed research to JAAPA and JPAE.

Objective: Highly published physician associate/assistant (PA) researchers were surveyed to quantify experienced support patterns that may inform increased support of PA-led research.

Methods: Publication volume of authors of research articles published in JAAPA and the Journal of Physician Assistant Education (JPAE) between 2011 and 2020 was recorded. PAs in the upper quartile were emailed surveys containing demographics and 25 Likert-scale questions.

Learning to stop responding.

Learning to stop responding is an important process that allows behavior to adapt to a changing and variable environment. This article reviews recent research in this laboratory and others that has studied how animals learn to stop responding in operant extinction, punishment, and feature-negative learning. Extinction and punishment are shown to be similar in two fundamental ways.

A Bibliometric Analysis of Scholarly Activity of Authors of Research Articles Published in the Journal of Physician Assistant Education from 2011-2020.

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to analyze bibliometric data and trends of author contributions to the Journal of Physician Assistant Education (JPAE) from 2011-2020.

Methods: Author data were collected from JPAE research articles published from 2011-2020. Publication history and h-index were obtained from Scopus.

A comparison of renewal, spontaneous recovery, and reacquisition after punishment and extinction.

Punishment and extinction are both effective methods of reducing instrumental responding and may involve similar learning mechanisms. To characterize the similarities and differences between them, we examined three well-established recovery or "relapse" effects -renewal, spontaneous recovery, and reacquisition - following either punishment or extinction of an instrumental response. In Experiment 1a, both punished and extinguished responses renewed to similar degrees following a context change at test (ABA renewal).

Reducing unnecessary routine laboratory testing for noncritically ill patients with COVID-19.

Background: Reducing unnecessary routine laboratory testing is a Choosing Wisely® recommendation, and new areas of overuse were noted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objective: To reduce unnecessary repetitive routine laboratory testing for patients with COVID-19 during the pandemic across a large safety net health system.

Designs, Settings And Participants: This quality improvement initiative was initiated by the System High-Value Care Council at New York City Health + Hospitals (H + H), the largest public healthcare system in the United States consisting of 11 acute care hospitals.

Inhibition in discriminated operant learning: Tests of response-specificity after feature-negative and extinction learning.

Six experiments with rats examined the nature of inhibition learned in an operant feature-negative (FN) discrimination. The results of prior experiments that examined instrumental extinction rather than FN learning suggest that inhibition can be very specific to the inhibited response. In Experiment 1, we trained lever-press and chain-pull responses in separate but parallel FN discriminations (AR1+, ABR1-, CR2+, and CDR2-) and then tested both inhibitors (B and D) with both responses.

High Rates of Anti-αIIbβ3 Antibodies Produced by a Glanzmann Thrombasthenia Patient after First and Unique Red Blood Cells Administration.

Immunization against the platelet αIIbβ3 glycoprotein due to blood transfusion represents one of the most severe complications in Glanzmann thrombasthenia (GT) disease. Anti-αIIbβ3 isoantibodies development may lead to ineffective platelet transfusion and can, in case of pregnancy, cross the placenta leading to fetal thrombocytopenia. We describe here the case of a girl with type I GT who developed high rates of anti-αIIbβ3 isoantibodies after first and unique blood transfusion.