Five rats got all of their water in daily 60-minute sessions. Two levers and a water spout were freely available throughout baseline sessions. Contingency sessions offered a choice between two alternative fixed-ratio components, in the form of a choice between the two levers. Each component required a specified number of lever presses for access to the spout, and then a specified number of licks for another choice between components. Given the observed relative frequency, the absolute frequency of selecting each component was predicted accurately by assuming that the subject conserved between baseline and contingency the total amount of a dimension attributable to lever pressing and licking. Several quantitative models for predicting relative frequency were examined. The best of these assumed that the subject would show a nonexclusive preference for the component requiring fewer lever presses.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1332749PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1901/jeab.1978.29-211DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

lever presses
8
relative frequency
8
conservation choice
4
choice concurrent
4
concurrent fixed-ratio
4
fixed-ratio schedule
4
schedule rats
4
rats water
4
water daily
4
daily 60-minute
4

Similar Publications

Direct Pathway Neurons in the Mouse Ventral Striatum Are Active During Goal-Directed Action but Not Reward Consumption During Operant Conditioning.

Biomedicines

December 2024

Department of Psychiatry, Division of Molecular Therapeutics, New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA.

Background/objectives: Learning is classically modeled to consist of an acquisition period followed by a mastery period when the skill no longer requires conscious control and becomes automatic. Dopamine neurons projecting to the ventral striatum (VS) produce a teaching signal that shifts from responding to rewarding or aversive events to anticipating cues, thus facilitating learning. However, the role of the dopamine-receptive neurons in the ventral striatum, particularly in encoding decision-making processes, remains less understood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Escalation of intravenous fentanyl self-administration and assessment of withdrawal behavior in male and female mice.

Psychopharmacology (Berl)

December 2024

Department of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47904, USA.

Rationale: The rise in overdose deaths from synthetic opioids, especially fentanyl, necessitates the development of preclinical models to study fentanyl use disorder (FUD). While there has been progress with rodent models, additional translationally relevant models are needed to examine excessive fentanyl intake and withdrawal signs.

Objective: The current study aimed to develop a translationally relevant preclinical mouse model of FUD by employing chronic intravenous fentanyl self-administration (IVSA).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Recent evidence suggests that cannabis can impair simple auditory processes, and these alterations might be due to cannabinoid agonism. The effect of cannabinoid agonism on relatively complex processes such as auditory discrimination is unknown. The goal of this study was to examine the impact of WIN 55,212-2, a CB1 receptor and CB2 receptor agonism, on auditory discrimination using a go/no-go task.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cholinergic regulation of decision making under risk of punishment.

Neurobiol Learn Mem

December 2024

Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX 78712, United States; Department of Neurology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX 78712, United States; Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX 78712, United States. Electronic address:

The ability to choose between options that differ in their risks and rewards depends on brain regions within the mesocorticolimbic circuit and regulation of their activity by neurotransmitter systems. Dopamine neurotransmission in particular plays a critical role in modulating such risk-taking behavior; however, the contribution of other major modulatory neurotransmitters, such as acetylcholine, is not as well-defined, especially for decision making in which the risk associated with more rewarding outcomes involves adverse consequences. Consequently, the goal of the current experiments was to examine how cholinergic signaling influences decision making involving risk of explicit punishment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Studying decision making in rats using a contextual visual discrimination task: Detection and prevention of alternative behavioral strategies.

J Neurosci Methods

December 2024

Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University - Newark,  197 University Ave, Newark, NJ 07102, USA. Electronic address:

Background: The neural bases of decision-making and contextual sensory discriminations have traditionally been studied in primates, highlighting the role of the prefrontal cortex in cognitive control and flexibility. With the advent of molecular tools to manipulate and monitor neuronal activity, these processes have increasingly been studied in rodents. However, rodent tasks typically consist of two-alternative forced choice paradigms that usually feature coarse sensory discriminations and no contextual dependence, limiting prefrontal involvement in task performance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!