Altered reward sensitivity to sucrose outcomes prior to drug exposure in alcohol preferring rats.

Addiction involves key impairments in reward sensitivity (RS). The current study explored impaired RS to natural reward as a predisposing factor to addictive-like behavior. Alcohol preferring (P) rats are selectively bred based on significantly greater ethanol consumption and preference and offer the ability to inspect differences in subjects with a positive family history of addictive-like behavior.

The Human Affectome Project: A dedication to Jaak Panksepp.

Mapping the neural basis of the Affectome was certainly the goal of Jaak Panksepp as he extended the work of a long line of thinkers from William James to Paul Maclean. Jaak's contribution was not just an incremental step, but a move to embrace feelings as a key component of affective science. His goal was to develop objective behavioral measures as he identified the neural substrates associated with affective states.

Mapping the brain basis of feelings, emotions and much more: A special issue focused on 'The Human Affectome'.

The Human Affectome Project was launched by the non-profit organization Neuroqualia (www.neuroqualia.org) in 2015 with the seemingly impossible goal: To map a psychological process and form possible definitions and working models for affective states and related emotions.

Effort-reward balance and work motivation in rats: Effects of context and order of experience.

Being motivated means exerting effort toward a goal. The 'law of least work' emphasizes a preference for exerting relatively less effort. The law crosses boundaries among species and between physical and mental work.

Exercise influences the impact of polychlorinated biphenyl exposure on immune function.

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are environmental pollutants and endocrine disruptors, harmfully affecting reproductive, endocrine, neurological and immunological systems. This broad influence has implications for processes such as wound healing, which is modulated by the immunological response of the body. Conversely, while PCBs can be linked to diminished wound healing, outside of PCB pollution systems, exercise has been shown to accelerate wound healing.

Mapping the interconnected neural systems underlying motivation and emotion: A key step toward understanding the human affectome.

As a part of a larger Affectome Project (http://neuroqualia.org/background.php) with an overarching goal of mapping and redefining biological substrates of feelings and emotions, we explored the neural underpinnings for the functions of motivation and emotion.

Translating striatal activity from brain slice to whole animal neurophysiology: A guide for neuroscience research integrating diverse levels of analysis.

An important goal of this review is highlighting research in neuroscience as examples of multilevel functional and anatomical analyses addressing basic science issues and applying results to the understanding of diverse disorders. The research of Dr. Michael Levine, a leader in neuroscience, exemplifies this approach by uncovering fundamental properties of basal ganglia function and translating these findings to clinical applications.

An investigation of variety effects during operant responding in the rat utilizing different reward flavors.

Humans and nonhuman animals respond to food diversity by increasing intake and appetitive behaviors, reflecting enhanced valuation for items presented in the context of variety. Previous work on food variety effects has posited two main explanatory mechanisms. Variety could slow habituation processes by decreasing exposure to a single food item or could elicit contrast effects in which comparisons between items impact relative valuation.

A possible social relative reward effect: Influences of outcome inequity between rats during operant responding.

Social interactions/situations have dramatic influences on motivation. Creating animal models examining these influences promotes a better understanding of the psychological and biological underpinnings of social motivation. Rodents are sensitive to social history/experience during associative conditioning and food-sharing tasks.

Neural encoding of choice during a delayed response task in primate striatum and orbitofrontal cortex.

Reward outcomes are available in many diverse situations and all involve choice. If there are multiple outcomes each rewarding, then decisions regarding relative value lead to choosing one over another. Important factors related to choice context should be encoded and utilized for this form of adaptive choosing.

Jaak Panksepp (1943-2017).

Presents an obituary for Jaak Panksepp, who died April 18, 2017. Panksepp reshaped the landscape of psychology by highlighting emotions and coincident feelings in basic and clinical research. Most of his career was spent convincing others that the key to understanding human mental illness was the understanding of primal emotional operating systems in conserved neural circuitry.

The effects of ethanol on diverse components of choice in the rat: reward discrimination, preference and relative valuation.

Alcohol consumption impairs judgment and choice. How alcohol alters these crucial processes is primarily unknown. Choice can be fractionated into different components including reward discrimination, preference and relative valuation that can function together or in isolation depending upon diverse factors including choice context.

Effects of anandamide administration on components of reward processing during free choice.

Previous research has implicated the positive modulation of anandamide, an endocannabinoid neurotransmitter, on feeding behavior. Anandamide is particularly noteworthy as it acts as an endogenous ligand of the CB1 receptor, the same receptor that is activated by tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary psychoactive component in Cannabis sativa. Cannabis legalization in North America has presented with a need to study endocannabinoid agonists and their effects on behavior.

Striatal Activity and Reward Relativity: Neural Signals Encoding Dynamic Outcome Valuation.

The striatum is a key brain region involved in reward processing. Striatal activity has been linked to encoding reward magnitude and integrating diverse reward outcome information. Recent work has supported the involvement of striatum in the valuation of outcomes.

Effects of striatal lesions on components of choice: Reward discrimination, preference, and relative valuation.

The striatum is a key structure involved in reward processing and choice. Recently, we have developed a paradigm to explore how components of reward processing work together or independently during choice behavior. These components include reward discrimination, preference and relative valuation, and the goal of the present study was to determine how the striatum is involved in these dissociable components during this novel free choice paradigm.

Fractionating choice: A study on reward discrimination, preference, and relative valuation in the rat (Rattus norvegicus).

Choice behavior combines discrimination between distinctive outcomes, preference for specific outcomes and relative valuation of comparable outcomes. Previous work has focused on 1 component (i.e.

Relative reward effects on operant behavior: Incentive contrast, induction and variety effects.

Comparing different rewards automatically produces dynamic relative outcome effects on behavior. Each new outcome exposure is to an updated version evaluated relative to alternatives. Relative reward effects include incentive contrast, positive induction and variety effects.

Emotion and relative reward processing: an investigation on instrumental successive negative contrast and ultrasonic vocalizations in the rat.

Incentive contrast effects include changes in behavioral responses after a reward upshift (positive contrast) or downshift (negative contrast). Proposed influences on these behavioral changes are emotional state reactions after experiencing or anticipating a change in reward outcome. Rat ultrasonic vocalizations have been shown to be indicators of emotional state during behavior and anticipatory periods.

Influence of emotional states on inhibitory gating: animals models to clinical neurophysiology.

Integrating research efforts using a cross-domain approach could redefine traditional constructs used in behavioral and clinical neuroscience by demonstrating that behavior and mental processes arise not from functional isolation but from integration. Our research group has been examining the interface between cognitive and emotional processes by studying inhibitory gating. Inhibitory gating can be measured via changes in behavior or neural signal processing.

Ultrasonic vocalizations, predictability and sensorimotor gating in the rat.

Prepulse inhibition (PPI) is a measure of sensorimotor gating in diverse groups of animals including humans. Emotional states can influence PPI in humans both in typical subjects and in individuals with mental illness. Little is known about emotional regulation during PPI in rodents.

Selective breeding for 50 kHz ultrasonic vocalization emission produces alterations in the ontogeny and regulation of rough-and-tumble play.

Ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are emitted by rodents and can signal either negative or positive affective states in social and nonsocial contexts. Our recent work has utilized selective breeding based upon the emission of 50 kHz USVs in response to standard cross species hand play-namely experimenters 'tickling' rats. Previous work has shown that high-tickle responsive animals (i.

Rethinking the cognitive revolution from a neural perspective: how overuse/misuse of the term 'cognition' and the neglect of affective controls in behavioral neuroscience could be delaying progress in understanding the BrainMind.

Words such as cognition, motivation and emotion powerfully guide theory development and the overall aims and goals of behavioral neuroscience research. Once such concepts are accepted generally as natural aspects of the brain, their influence can be pervasive and long lasting. Importantly, the choice of conceptual terms used to describe and study mental/neural functions can also constrain research by forcing the results into seemingly useful 'conceptual' categories that have no discrete reality in the brain.