Behavioral NeuroscienceThis is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader, such as GoogleReader, or to display this data on your own website or blog. Subscribe to this data using MyMedWorm.Subscribe to this data using GoogleReader.Subscribe to this data using Bloglines.Subscribe to this data using MyYahoo.

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Factors governing single-trial contextual fear conditioning in the weanling rat.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Although contextual fear conditioning emerges later in development than explicit-cue fear conditioning, little is known about the stimulus parameters and biological substrates required at early ages. The authors adapted methods for investigating hippocampus function in adult rodents to identify determinants of contextual fear conditioning in developing rats. Experiment 1 examined the duration of exposure required by weanling rats at postnatal day (PND) 23 to demonstrate contextual fear conditioning. This experiment demonstrated that 30 s of context exposure is sufficient to support conditioning. Furthermore, preexposure en...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Burman, M. A.; Murawski, N. J.; Schiffino, F. L.; Rosen, J. B.; Stanton, M. E. Source Type: journals

The lasting effects of spike insoles on postural control in the elderly.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The purpose of the present study was to explore the lasting effects of a tactile sensitivity enhancement induced by spike insoles on the control of stance in the elderly. Healthy elderly subjects (n = 19, mean age = 68.8) and young adults (n = 17, mean age = 24.3) were instructed to stand or to walk for 5 minutes with sandals equipped with spike insoles. Postural control was evaluated four times during unperturbed stance: (1) before putting on the sandals equipped with spike insoles, (2) 5 minutes after standing or walking with them, (3) immediately after placing thin, smooth, and flexible insoles (no spike insoles) into t...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Palluel, Estelle; Olivier, Isabelle; Nougier, Vincent Source Type: journals

Contribution of endogenous opioids to gonadal hormones-induced temporomandibular joint antinociception.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this study, the authors investigate the contribution of endogenous opioids to this antinociceptive effect of gonadal hormones in the TMJ formalin test. The opioid receptor antagonist naloxone was administrated either in the surrounding of the trigeminal sensory complex or in the TMJ region. The antinociceptive effect induced by endogenous estradiol in proestrus females and by exogenous estradiol in ovariectomized females was blocked by the administration of naloxone in the surrounding of the trigeminal sensory complex, but not in the TMJ region. The antinociceptive effect induced by the administration of progesterone in...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Fischer, Luana; Arthuri, Mariana T.; Torres-Chávez, Karla E.; Tambeli, Claudia Herrera Source Type: journals

Appetitively motivated instrumental learning in SynGAP heterozygous knockout mice.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In conclusion, constitutive SynGAP reduction increases vigor in the execution of learned operant behavior without compromising its temporal control, yielding effects readily distinguishable from NMDAR blockade. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Behavioral Neuroscience)
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Muhia, Mary; Feldon, Joram; Knuesel, Irene; Yee, Benjamin K. Source Type: journals

Interval timing accuracy and scalar timing in C57BL/6 mice.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In many species, interval timing behavior is accurate—appropriate estimated durations—and scalar—errors vary linearly with estimated durations. Whereas accuracy has been previously examined, scalar timing has not been clearly demonstrated in house mice (Mus musculus), raising concerns about mouse models of human disease. The authors estimated timing accuracy and precision in C57BL/6 mice, the most used background strain for genetic models of human disease, in a peak-interval procedure with multiple intervals. Both when timing 2 intervals (Experiment 1) or 3 intervals (Experiment 2), C57BL/6 mice demonstrated varying ...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Buhusi, Catalin V.; Aziz, Dyana; Winslow, David; Carter, Rickey E.; Swearingen, Joshua E.; Buhusi, Mona C. Source Type: journals

Magnitude and timing of conditioned responses in delay and trace classical conditioning of the nictitating membrane response of the rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus).Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The present experiment characterized conditioned nictitating membrane (NM) movements as a function of CS duration, using the full range of discernible movements (>.06 mm) rather than movements exceeding a conventional criterion (>.50 mm). The CS–US interval was fixed at 500 ms, while across groups, the duration of the CS was 50 ms (trace), 550 ms (delay), or 1050 ms (extended delay). The delay group showed the highest level of acquisition. When tested with the different CS durations, the delay and extended delay groups showed large reductions in their responses when their CS was shortened to 50 ms, but the trace group ma...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Kehoe, E. James; Ludvig, Elliot A.; Sutton, Richard S. Source Type: journals

Discriminative conditioning with different CS–US intervals produces temporally differentiated conditioned responses in the two eyes of the rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus).Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The conditioned eyeblink response (CR) in rabbits is lateralized to the eye targeted by the unconditioned stimulus (US). However, a contralateral component has been reported during concurrent discriminative conditioning of the two eyes. The authors investigated CRs produced by both eyes during conditioning with 2 different interstimulus intervals (ISIs) in which a short conditioned stimulus (CS) was paired with a US to the left eye and a long CS was paired with a US to the right eye. Whether the 2 CSs were more or less similar (or identical), the short CS produced short-latency CRs in the left eye, whereas the long CS prod...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Lee, Taekwan; Kim, Jeansok J.; Wagner, Allan R. Source Type: journals

MDMA pretreatment leads to mild chronic unpredictable stress-induced impairments in spatial learning.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is a drug of abuse worldwide and a selective serotonin (5-HT) neurotoxin. An important factor in the risk of drug abuse and relapse is stress. Although multiple parallels exist between MDMA abuse and stress, including effects on 5-HTergic neurotransmission, few studies have investigated the consequences of combined exposure to MDMA and chronic stress. Therefore, rats were pretreated with MDMA and exposed 7 days later to 10 days of mild chronic unpredictable stress (CUS). MDMA pretreatment was hypothesized to enhance the effects of CUS leading to enhanced 5-HT transporter (SERT) depl...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Cunningham, Jacobi I.; Raudensky, Jamie; Tonkiss, John; Yamamoto, Bryan K. Source Type: journals

Cold pressor stress impairs performance on working memory tasks requiring executive functions in healthy young men.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The current study investigated the effects of cold pressor stress (CPS) on 2 working memory (WM) tasks differing in the demand they put on maintenance and executive processing. For this purpose 72 healthy young men were exposed either to a stress group or a nonstressful control group. Subsequently, WM performance on the O-Span task (Turner & Engle, 1989) and the digit span task was assessed. Salivary cortisol was measured before and 2 times after the treatment as a marker of hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis activity. Results revealed a significant performance impairment of the O-Span and the digit span task ba...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Schoofs, Daniela; Wolf, Oliver T.; Smeets, Tom Source Type: journals

"Sensory gating impairments in heavy cannabis users are associated with altered neural oscillations": Correction.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Reports an error in "Sensory gating impairments in heavy cannabis users are associated with altered neural oscillations" by Chad R. Edwards, Patrick D. Skosnik, Adam B. Steinmetz, Brian F. O’Donnell and William P. Hetrick (Behavioral Neuroscience, 2009[Aug], Vol 123[4], 894-904). An incorrect version of the abstract was published. The correct version follows: Central cannabinoid receptors mediate neural oscillations and are localized to networks implicated in auditory P50 sensory gating, including the hippocampus and neocortex. The current study examined whether neural oscillations evoked by the paired clicks (S1, S2) ar...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Edwards, Chad R.; Skosnik, Patrick D.; Steinmetz, Adam B.; O'Donnell, Brian F.; Hetrick, William P. Source Type: journals

Assessing the role of the growth hormone secretagogue receptor in motivational learning and food intake.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The orexigenic neuropeptide ghrelin is an endogeneous ligand for the growth hormone secretagogue receptor (GHS-R). This orexigen is expressed in both the periphery and in the central system, including portions of mesolimbic dopaminergic circuitry that play a role in affective behaviors. Here we examined pharmacological antagonism of GHS-R in motivational incentive learning, as reflected in Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT). Furthermore, it is currently unclear whether the previous effects of ghrelin on food intake are mediated by pre- and/or postingestive influences on ingestive behavior. Thus, the authors also cond...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Johnson, Alexander W.; Canter, Rebecca; Gallagher, Michela; Holland, Peter C. Source Type: journals

Selective serotonin receptor stimulation of the medial nucleus accumbens causes differential effects on food intake and locomotion.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Substantial evidence suggests that pharmacological manipulations of neural serotonin pathways influence ingestive behaviors. Despite the known role of the nucleus accumbens in directing appetitive and consummatory behavior, there has been little examination of the influences that serotonin receptors may play in modulating feeding within nucleus accumbens circuitry. In these experiments, the authors examined the effects of bilateral nucleus accumbens infusions of the 5-HT1/7 receptor agonist 5-CT (at 0.0, 0.5, 1.0, or 4.0 µg/0.5 µl/side), the 5-HT6 receptor agonist EMD 386088 (at 0.0, 1.0, and 4.0 µg/0.5 µl/side), or th...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Pratt, Wayne E.; Blackstone, Kaitlin; Connolly, Megan E.; Skelly, Mary Jane Source Type: journals

Ionizing radiation impairs the formation of trace fear memories and reduces hippocampal neurogenesis.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Long-term cognitive impairments are a feared consequence of therapeutic cranial irradiation in children as well as adults. Studies in animal models suggest that these deficits may be associated with a decrease in hippocampal granule cell proliferation and survival. In the present study the authors examined whether whole brain irradiation would affect trace fear conditioning, a hippocampal-dependent task. Preadolescent (postnatal Day 21, PD 21), adolescent (PD 50), and postadolescent (PD 70) rats received single doses of 0 Gray (Gy), 0.3 Gy, 3 Gy, or 10 Gy whole brain irradiation. Three months after radiation treatment, a s...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Achanta, Pragathi; Fuss, Martin; Martinez Jr., Joe L. Source Type: journals

Double dissociation and hierarchical organization of strategy switches and reversals in the rat PFC.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Prelimbic–infralimbic cortex (PL-IL) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) influence behavioral flexibility in the rat. The authors tested the effects of PL-IL or OFC infusion with the GABA agonist muscimol in the context of 2 flexible responding tasks: strategy switching and reversal. Muscimol infusion into PL-IL impaired retention of strategy switches but not reversals, whereas muscimol infusion into OFC impaired retention of reversals but not switches. However, whereas training in repeated reversals did not remove the requirement of PL-IL for switch retention (E. L. Rich & M. L. Shapiro, 2007), training in repeated switches ...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Young, James J.; Shapiro, Matthew L. Source Type: journals

Deletion of glycine transporter 1 (GlyT1) in forebrain neurons facilitates reversal learning: Enhanced cognitive adaptability?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Local availability of glycine near N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) is partly regulated by neuronal glycine transporter 1 (GlyT1), which can therefore modulate NMDAR function because binding to the glycine site of the NMDAR is necessary for channel activation. Disrupting GlyT1 in forebrain neurons has been shown to enhance Pavlovian conditioning and object recognition memory. Here, the authors report that the same genetic manipulation facilitated reversal learning in the water maze test of reference memory, but did not lead to any clear improvement in a working memory version of the water maze test. Facilitation in ...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Singer, Philipp; Boison, Detlev; Möhler, Hanns; Feldon, Joram; Yee, Benjamin K. Source Type: journals

Bimanual motor coordination in agenesis of the corpus callosum.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The nature and extent of deficiencies in bimanual motor coordination in individuals with agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) was studied using the computerized Bimanual Coordination Test (cBCT). Compared with previous bimanual tasks, the cBCT is more specifically reliant on interhemispheric interactions of lateralized motor control, allows more precise measurement, and permits examination of performance over a wider range of bimanual challenges. The cBCT performance of 13 high-functioning individuals with complete ACC was compared to 21 age- and IQ-matched controls. The groups did not differ in unimanual response speed. ...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Mueller, Kendra L. Oakes; Marion, Sarah DeBoard; Paul, Lynn K.; Brown, Warren S. Source Type: journals

Naloxone, but not flupenthixol, disrupts the development of conditioned ejaculatory preference in the male rat.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Male rats display a conditioned preference to ejaculate with a female bearing an odor paired previously with copulation to ejaculation. The present study examined the role of endogenous opioid and dopamine systems in this preference. Male rats received saline, the opioid receptor antagonist naloxone, or the dopamine receptor antagonist flupenthixol prior to 10 conditioning trials in a pacing chamber with an almond-scented female. On the final test, all males were injected with saline and given access to 2 females, 1 scented and the other unscented, in an open field. Only males injected with naloxone during training failed ...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Ismail, Nafissa; Girard-Bériault, Fabienne; Nakanishi, Satoru; Pfaus, James G. Source Type: journals

Social investigation in a memory task relates to natural variation in septal expression of oxytocin receptor and vasopressin receptor 1a in prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster).Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Arginine vasopressin (AVP) and oxytocin (OT) influence social behavior and cognitive processes and may explain some of the variance associated with individual differences in behavior. Although great focus has been placed on the roles of these peptides in learning and memory, less attention has been given to the receptors to which they bind. The authors exposed male prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) to novel females in a multitrial social recognition test to investigate whether individual differences in vasopressin receptor (V1aR) or oxytocin receptor (OTR) related to social recognition. The authors also explored differe...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Ophir, Alexander G.; Zheng, Da-Jiang; Eans, Shainnel; Phelps, Steven M. Source Type: journals

Acute illness induces the release of aversive odor cues from adult, but not prepubertal, male rats and suppresses social investigation by conspecifics.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The present study examined odorant communication during acute illness provoked by injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS; 100 µg/kg) and how these effects vary between prepubertal and adult conspecifics. Exposure to odor of LPS-treated adult male rats produced increased avoidance in both sexes of adults and prepubertal male partners. This response was not found when they were exposed to odor of LPS-treated prepubertal males. Even a 2.5-fold higher load of LPS in prepubertal males failed to produce aversive odor cues, suggesting that the difference in the odor is not a simple issue of dose/body volume. Both estradiol benzoat...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Arakawa, Hiroyuki; Arakawa, Keiko; Deak, Terrence Source Type: journals

Sex steroids are necessary in the second postnatal week for the expression of male alloparental behavior in prairie voles (Microtus ochragaster).Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Sex steroids play a significant role in organizing male social behavior, which is associated with low levels of pro-social behavior and high levels of aggression. However, the role of steroids in organizing behavior in highly social males is unclear. The authors tested the hypothesis that low levels of sex steroids facilitate the expression of pro-social behavior in male prairie voles (Microtus ochragaster), predicting that inhibition of testosterone and estradiol would reduce spontaneous-alloparental behavior. Treatment with the aromatase inhibitor 1,4,6-androstatriene-3,17-dione (ATD) or the androgen receptor blocker flu...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Kramer, Kristin M.; Perry, Adam N.; Golbin, Dina; Cushing, Bruce S. Source Type: journals

Enhanced maternal aggression and associated changes in neuropeptide gene expression in multiparous rats.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Although it has often been speculated that prior reproductive experience improves subsequent maternal care, few studies have examined specific changes in behavior during a 1st versus 2nd lactation. During lactation, mothers display heightened aggression toward male intruders, purportedly to protect vulnerable young. In the current study, maternal aggression was examined in primiparous and age-matched multiparous females on postpartum days 5 (PPD5) and PPD15. Expression of oxytocin, oxytocin receptor, arginine vasopressin, arginine vasopressin V1a receptors, and corticotrophin-releasing hormone mRNA was measured following a...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Nephew, Benjamin C.; Bridges, Robert S.; Lovelock, Dennis F.; Byrnes, Elizabeth M. Source Type: journals

Interactions between cognition and circadian rhythms: Attentional demands modify circadian entrainment.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Animals and humans are able to predict and synchronize their daily activity to signals present in their environments. Environmental cues are most often associated with signaling the beginning or the end of a daily activity cycle, but they can also be used to time the presentation or availability of scarce resources. If the signal occurs consistently, animals can begin to anticipate its arrival and ultimately become entrained to its presence. While many stimuli can produce anticipation for a daily event, these events rarely lead to changes in activity patterns during the rest of the circadian cycle. Here the authors demonst...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - October 20, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Gritton, Howard J.; Sutton, Blair C.; Martinez, Vicente; Sarter, Martin; Lee, Theresa M. Source Type: journals

Appetitive motivational experience during adolescence results in enhanced alcohol consumption during adulthood.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Exposure to alcohol during adolescence is predictive of adult alcohol abuse and dependence. The present experiment was designed to measure the impact of appetitive motivational engagement with ethanol during adolescence on adult ethanol consumption. To this end, a group of adolescent male Wistar rats was allowed to traverse an operant runway to obtain access to a sweetened 10% ethanol solution (wt/vol) over 18 sessions. An additional yoked-control group was allowed access to an identical solution; however, exposure to the solution was contingent on the experimental groups entry into the goal box of the runway. Once the ado...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Walker, Brendan M.; Ehlers, Cindy L. Source Type: journals

Yoked delivery of cocaine is aversive and protects against the motivation for drug in rats.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In Experiment 1, water-deprived rats had 5-min access to saccharin followed by active or yoked intravenous delivery of saline or cocaine (0.33 mg/infusion). Both cocaine groups avoided intake of the saccharin cue following saccharin–cocaine pairings; however, the rats in the yoked condition exhibited greater avoidance of the taste cue than did the actively administering rats. Experiment 2 evaluated subsequent self-administration behavior on fixed- and progressive-ratio schedules of reinforcement. The results showed that prior yoked exposure to cocaine reduced subsequent drug-taking behavior on a progressive-ratio but not...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Twining, Robert C.; Bolan, Matthew; Grigson, Patricia S. Source Type: journals

Running and addiction: Precipitated withdrawal in a rat model of activity-based anorexia.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Exercise improves cardiovascular health, strengthens muscles and bones, stimulates neuroplasticity, and promotes feelings of well-being. However, when taken to extremes, exercise can develop into an addictive-like behavior. To assess the addictive potential of exercise, withdrawal symptoms following injections of 1.0 mg/kg naloxone were compared in active and inactive male and female rats. Active and inactive rats were given food for 1 hr or 24 hr/day. Additionally, a group of inactive rats was pair-fed the amount of food consumed on the previous day by food-restricted active rats. Rats fed for 1 hr/day decreased food inta...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Kanarek, Robin B.; D’Anci, Kristen E.; Jurdak, Nicole; Mathes, Wendy Foulds Source Type: journals

Sensory gating impairments in heavy cannabis users are associated with altered neural oscillations.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Cannabis use was positively associated with high P50 ratios and negatively with post-S2 event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) gamma power. Findings suggest that heavy cannabis use is associated with aberrant beta and gamma activity in the dual-click procedure, which corroborates recent work demonstrating central cannabinoid receptors mediate neural oscillations and are localized to networks implicated in auditory P50 sensory gating, including the hippocampus and neocortex. The current study examined whether neural oscillations evoked by the paired clicks (S1, S2) are associated with abnormal P50 gating reported in can...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Edwards, Chad R.; Skosnik, Patrick D.; Steinmetz, Adam B.; O’Donnell, Brian F.; Hetrick, William P. Source Type: journals

Prenatal psychosocial stress exposure is associated with subsequent working memory performance in young women.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The aim of the present study was to examine the association between prenatal psychosocial stress exposure and subsequent prefrontal cortex-dependent working memory performance in human adults. Working memory performance was assessed using an item-recognition task under 10 mg hydrocortisone (cortisol) and placebo conditions in a sample of 32 healthy young women (mean age = 25 ± 4.34 years) whose mothers experienced a major negative life event during their pregnancy (Prenatal Stress, PS group), and in a comparison group of 27 healthy young women (mean age = 24 ± 3.4 years). The two groups did not differ in the placebo cond...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Entringer, Sonja; Buss, Claudia; Kumsta, Robert; Hellhammer, Dirk H.; Wadhwa, Pathik D.; Wüst, Stefan Source Type: journals

The rat prelimbic cortex mediates inhibitory response control but not the consolidation of instrumental learning.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The potential role of the prelimbic cortex of the rat in the acquisition of instrumental responding is currently uncertain. In addition, modeling the acquisition of Pavlovian and spatial conditioning tasks has suggested that the process of acquisition can, for certain forms of learning, be step like and consequently misrepresented in averaged group curves. Here, the authors report an experiment investigating the potential involvement of the prelimbic cortex in instrumental acquisition, in which the authors used the control data to model individual acquisition curves mathematically. The authors show that instrumental acquis...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Jonkman, Sietse; Mar, Adam C.; Dickinson, Anthony; Robbins, Trevor W.; Everitt, Barry J. Source Type: journals

Individual differences in skilled reaching for food related to increased number of gestures: Evidence for goal and habit learning of skilled reaching.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Skilled reaching in rodents and primate is motorically similar, but success in reaching by rodents is distinctively variable. The source of this variability has not been examined previously. Long–Evans rats were videotaped as they reached for food in 2 different reaching tasks, and endpoint measures of performance were examined in relation to variables previously associated with individual differences, including testing procedures, rehabilitation, movement ability, general locomotor activity, and cortical anatomy. There were individual differences in performance, but these were not related to the dependent measures relat...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Gholamrezaei, Gita; Whishaw, Ian Q. Source Type: journals

Eyeblink conditioning leads to fewer synapses in the rabbit cerebellar cortex.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Eyeblink conditioning involves the pairing of a conditioned stimulus (tone) to an aversive unconditioned stimulus (air puff). Although the circuitry that underlies this form of learning is well defined, synaptic changes in these structures have not been fully investigated. This experiment examined synaptic structural plasticity in the cerebellar cortex, a structure that has been found to modulate the acquisition and timing of the conditioned response. Long-term depression of Purkinje cells (PCs) in the cerebellar cortex has been proposed as a mechanism for releasing inhibition of the interpositus nuclei, a structure critic...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Connor, S.; Bloomfield, J.; LeBoutillier, J. C.; Thompson, R. F.; Petit, T. L.; Weeks, A. C. W. Source Type: journals

Interpreting patterns of brain activation in human fear conditioning with an attentional–associative learning model.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
J. E. Dunsmoor, P. A. Bandettini, and D. C. Knight (see record 2007-11112-001) conducted a neuroimaging study of human fear conditioning and analyzed brain activity under various pairing rates between a conditioned and an unconditioned stimulus. Computer simulations with an attentional-associative model introduced by N. A. Schmajuk, Y. W. Lam, and J. A. Gray (1996) show that activity in the amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex is well described by a variable representing the prediction of the unconditioned stimulus, whereas activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and insula is well captured by a variable coding th...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Dunsmoor, Joseph; Schmajuk, Nestor Source Type: journals

Protein kinase Mzeta maintains fear memory in the amygdala but not in the hippocampus.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study examined the role of PKM? in amygdala and hippocampal neurons following a standard fear conditioning protocol. The results indicate that PKM? inhibition in the amygdala, but not in the hippocampus, can disrupt fear memory. This suggests that PKM? may only maintain select forms of memory in specific brain structures and does not participate in a universal memory storage mechanism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Behavioral Neuroscience)
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Kwapis, Janine L.; Jarome, Timothy J.; Lonergan, Mary E.; Helmstetter, Fred J. Source Type: journals

Delayed extinction attenuates conditioned fear renewal and spontaneous recovery in humans.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study investigated whether the retention interval after an aversive learning experience influences the return of fear after extinction training. After fear conditioning, participants underwent extinction training either 5 min or 1 day later and in either the same room (same context) or a different room (context shift). The next day, conditioned fear was tested in the original room. When extinction took place immediately, fear renewal was robust and prolonged for context-shift participants, and spontaneous recovery was observed in the same-context participants. Delayed extinction, by contrast, yielded a brief form of f...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Huff, Nicole C.; Hernandez, Jose Alba; Blanding, Nineequa Q.; LaBar, Kevin S. Source Type: journals

Dopaminergic modulation of olfactory bulb processing affects odor discrimination learning in rats.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Olfactory behavioral studies have shown that, when modulated through systemic injections, D1 and D2 receptors have opposing effects on odor discrimination learning. In the present study, cannulated male Sprague–Dawley rats were used to investigate how the modulation of these 2 types of dopaminergic receptors through direct infusion of D1/D2 agonists and antagonists into the olfactory bulb affect olfactory perception. Dopaminergic modulation was locally altered by manipulations of D1 (agonist SKF 82958: 14.6, 43.8, & 143.6 mM; antagonist SCH-23390: 13.4, 40.1, & 60.1 mM) and D2 (agonists quinpirole: 78.2, 117.3, & 156.4 m...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Escanilla, Olga; Yuhas, Courtney; Marzan, David; Linster, Christiane Source Type: journals

Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) hear rising frequency sounds as looming.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Rising sound intensity provides an important cue for the detection of looming objects. Studies with humans indirectly suggest that rising pitch can also signal a looming object. This link between rising intensity and rising frequency is puzzling because no physical rise in frequency occurs when a sound source approaches. Putative explanations include (a) the idea that the loudness of sound depends on its frequency, (b) the frequent co-occurrence of rising intensity with rising frequency in vocalizations generates an association between the 2 features, and (c) auditory neurons process amplitude- and frequency-modulated soun...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Ghazanfar, Asif A.; Maier, Joost X. Source Type: journals

Visual asymmetries in Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) retain a lifelong potential for plasticity.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Adult Japanese quail display left-eye/right-hemisphere dominance in visually guided sexual tracking. In 2 experiments, the authors set out to answer if this functional cerebral asymmetry is modifiable by posthatch monocular deprivation. In Experiment 1, the left or the right eye of 2-day old quail were closed for 70 days. Quail were run in a left- or a right-turning runway to obtain access to a conspecific of the opposite sex. The performance of both left and right eye systems was equal. In Experiment 2, the deprived eyes of the quail were opened and the previously open eyes were closed. They were tested with the same runw...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Gülbetekin, Evrim; Güntürkün, Onur; Dural, Seda; Çetinkaya, Hakan Source Type: journals

Insular cortex and consummatory successive negative contrast in the rat.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Rats that are expecting a high value reward (e.g., 1.0 M sucrose) show an exaggerated underresponding when they are instead given a low value reward (e.g., 0.15% saccharin), an effect termed successive negative contrast (SNC). In the present experiment, insular cortex-lesioned (ICX) rats showed normal responsivity to sucrose and saccharin prior to the reward downshift. However, when switched from sucrose to saccharin during the postshift trials these rats displayed no evidence of SNC. Indeed, over the downshift trials these ICX rats consistently drank more saccharin than the ICX rats maintained on saccharin throughout the ...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Lin, Jian-You; Roman, Christopher; Reilly, Steve Source Type: journals

Role of acetylcholine in negative patterning in turtles (Chrysemys picta).Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Turtles were run on a negative patterning task involving 2 positive elements, a key with white stripes on a black background, and a solid red key, and a compound stimulus combining the 2 elements, white stripes on a red background. Injections of scopolamine, methylscopolamine, or saline were started at the same time that the compound stimulus was introduced, after the animals had been autoshaped to press the key for each of the elements. Scopolamine disrupted the learning of negative patterning, but methylscopolamine had no effect. In contrast, learning of a simple discrimination between the elements was not affected by sc...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Powers, Alice Schade; Hogue, Phillip; Lynch, Christian; Gattuso, Brian; Lissek, Shmuel; Nayal, Christine Source Type: journals

Trait impulsivity predicts escalation of sucrose seeking and hypersensitivity to sucrose-associated stimuli.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Poor impulse control has been associated with compulsive drug seeking and an enhanced risk of relapse, suggesting that impulsivity is causally related to addiction proneness and relapse vulnerability. However, whether this association is specific to drugs of abuse or whether heightened impulsivity relates to a general increase in sensitivity to rewards and reward-associated stimuli is unknown. To address this issue, the authors selected rats on the basis of individual differences in impulsive action in the 5-choice serial reaction time task, after which they were subjected to an operant sucrose self-administration paradigm...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Diergaarde, Leontien; Pattij, Tommy; Nawijn, Laura; Schoffelmeer, Anton N. M.; De Vries, Taco J. Source Type: journals

Behavioral characterization of amygdala involvement in mediating intra-accumbens opioid-driven feeding behavior.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The present experiments were conducted to provide a more detailed behavioral analysis of the dissociable roles of the basolateral (BLA) and central nucleus (CeA) of the amygdala in mediating intra-accumbens (Acb) opioid-induced feeding of a high-fat diet. Confirming previous findings, temporary inactivation of the CeA with the GABAA agonist muscimol reduced DAMGO (D-Ala2-NMe-Phe4-Glyol5-enkephalin)-induced and baseline food intake, whereas intra-BLA muscimol selectively blocked only DAMGO-induced food intake, leaving baseline feeding intact. However, although inactivation of the BLA reduced DAMGO-induced food intake to con...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Will, Matthew J.; Pritchett, Carolyn E.; Parker, Kyle E.; Sawani, A. M.; Ma, H.; Lai, Annie Y. Source Type: journals

General and persistent effects of high-intensity sweeteners on body weight gain and caloric compensation in rats.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In an earlier work (S. E. Swithers & T. L. Davidson, 2008), rats provided with a fixed amount of a yogurt diet mixed with saccharin gained more weight and showed impaired caloric compensation relative to rats given the same amount of yogurt mixed with glucose. The present 4 experiments examined the generality of these findings and demonstrated that increased body weight gain was also demonstrated when animals consumed a yogurt diet sweetened with an alternative high-intensity sweetener (acesulfame potassium; AceK) as well as in animals given a saccharin-sweetened base diet (refried beans) that was calorically similar but n...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Swithers, Susan E.; Baker, Chelsea R.; Davidson, T. L. Source Type: journals

Boosting cholinergic activity in gustatory cortex enhances the salience of a familiar conditioned stimulus in taste aversion learning.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The cholinergic system is important for learning, memory, and responses to novel stimuli. Exposure to novel, but not familiar, tastes increases extracellular acetylcholine (ACh) levels in insular cortex (IC). To further examine whether cholinergic activation is a critical signal of taste novelty, in these studies carbachol, a direct cholinergic agonist, was infused into IC before conditioned taste aversion (CTA) training with a familiar taste. By mimicking the cholinergic activation generated by novel taste exposure, it was hypothesized that a familiar taste would be treated as novel and therefore a salient target for aver...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Clark, Emily Wilkins; Bernstein, Ilene L. Source Type: journals

Medial amygdala involvement in discrimination of same-species and closely-related-species male stimuli in estrous female Mesocricetus hamsters.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Efficient discrimination between individuals of closely related species is important to maximize reproductive potential. Some studies using males as subjects have indicated that the medial amygdala (MeA) is involved in discrimination between odors of conspecific females and females from distantly related species. The authors investigated the involvement of the MeA in discrimination by females between odors of conspecific males and odors of males of a closely related species. The authors exposed estrous or diestrous female hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) to saline, conspecific male odors, or heterospecific (M. brandti) male...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: delBarco-Trillo, Javier; Gulewicz, Kara; Johnston, Robert E. Source Type: journals

Lesions of the medial preoptic area interfere with the display of a conditioned place preference for vaginocervical stimulation in rats.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The present study examined the effect of ibotenic acid lesions of the medial preoptic area (mPOA) on the expression of a conditioned place preference (CPP) for vaginocervical stimulation. Rats with bilateral lesions of the mPOA failed to display the CPP for vaginocervical stimulation shown by rats with sham or incomplete lesions. These findings provide additional support for the role of the mPOA in the neural circuitry underlying the reinforcing effects of female sexual behavior and raise the possibility that the altered pattern of approach and withdrawal behavior observed following lesions of the mPOA may be attributable ...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Meerts, Sarah H.; Clark, Ann S. Source Type: journals

Temporary inactivation of ventral tegmental area neurons with either muscimol or baclofen reversibly disrupts maternal behavior in rats through different underlying mechanisms.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of inactivation of ventral tegmental area (VTA) projection neurons, while sparing fibers of passage, on maternal behavior in rats. Because VTA neurons contain GABA-A and GABA-B receptors, the effects of muscimol or baclofen were studied. Although bilateral injections of either drug into the VTA disrupted maternal behavior, it is likely that they did so through different underlying mechanisms. Muscimol disrupted both retrieval of pups and nursing behavior, while causing stereotyped motor activity. Baclofen disrupted retrieval behavior without affecting nursing behavior, a...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Numan, Michael; Stolzenberg, Danielle S.; Dellevigne, Amanda A.; Correnti, Christina M.; Numan, Marilyn J. Source Type: journals

Motherhood and nursing stimulate c-FOS expression in the rabbit forebrain.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Mother rabbits nurse once daily with circadian periodicity. The authors investigated brain structures involved in regulating this activity by quantifying c-FOS-immunoreactive (IR) cells in the forebrain of: (1) mothers killed on postpartum Day 1 (PPD 1) after nursing (Group 1) or not given pups (Group 2); (2) mothers killed on PPD 7 after nursing (Group 3) or not given pups on such day (Group 4); (3) unmated virgins (Group 5). Groups 1 through 4 showed similar numbers of c-FOS-IR cells in the preoptic area, an amount around three to fourfold larger than that found in virgins. Nursing increased, on PPD 1 and 7, c-FOS-IR cel...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: González-Mariscal, Gabriela; Jiménez, Angeles; Chirino, Rosario; Beyer, Carlos Source Type: journals

Impaired timing precision produced by striatal D2 receptor overexpression is mediated by cognitive and motivational deficits.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Increased striatal dopamine D2 receptor activity is thought to contribute to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. To model this condition in mice, Kellendonk et al. (2006) generated transgenic mice that selectively overexpress the D2 receptor in striatum (D2OE). Drew et al. (2007) reported that D2OE mice display deficits in interval timing and motivation. The present study further explored the impaired timing in D2OE mice. Experiment 1 assessed the role of motivation in producing timing deficits in the peak procedure and found that performance in D2OE mice was improved by increasing motivation. In addition, performance wa...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Ward, Ryan D.; Kellendonk, Christoph; Simpson, Eleanor H.; Lipatova, Olga; Drew, Michael R.; Fairhurst, Stephen; Kandel, Eric R.; Balsam, Peter D. Source Type: journals

Sleep selectively enhances hippocampus-dependent memory in mice.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Sleep has been implicated as playing a critical role in memory consolidation. Emerging evidence suggests that reactivation of memories during sleep may facilitate the transfer of declarative memories from the hippocampus to the neocortex. Previous rodent studies have utilized sleep-deprivation to examine the role of sleep in memory consolidation. The present study uses a novel, naturalistic paradigm to study the effect of a sleep phase on rodent Pavlovian fear conditioning, a task with both hippocampus-dependent and -independent components (contextual vs. cued memories). Mice were trained 1 hour before their sleep/rest pha...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - July 28, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Cai, Denise J.; Shuman, Tristan; Gorman, Michael R.; Sage, Jennifer R.; Anagnostaras, Stephan G. Source Type: journals

"Effects on executive function following damage to the prefrontal cortex in the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta)": Correction to Moore et al (2009).Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Reports an error in "Effects on executive function following damage to the prefrontal cortex in the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta)" by Tara L. Moore, Stephen P. Schettler, Ronald J. Killiany, Douglas L. Rosene and Mark B. Moss (Behavioral Neuroscience, 2009[Apr], Vol 123[2], 231-241). There was an error in the first sentence of the third full paragraph in the text on p. 235. The sentence should read “Based on the lesion reconstructions it was determined, as intended, that all monkeys had complete damage to areas 46, 8a, 8b, 9 and slight damage to area 10.” (The following abstract of the original article appeared in rec...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - June 6, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Moore, Tara L.; Schettler, Stephen P.; Killiany, Ronald J.; Rosene, Douglas L.; Moss, Mark B. Source Type: journals

Additional evidence for intact appetitive trace conditioning in hippocampal-lesioned rats.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Hippocampal lesions impair aversive trace conditioning but do not interfere with appetitive Pavlovian trace conditioning of the licking response (LR). This experiment examined whether learning to discriminate the events occurring in the home cage and in the training chamber could account for the differential effects of hippocampal lesions on aversive and appetitive trace conditioning. Performance of rats with excitotoxic lesions of the hippocampus was compared to that of sham-operated rats in LR trace conditioning. The unconditional stimulus (US) “cola soft drink” was delivered only in the training chamber. Thus, as in...
Source: Behavioral Neuroscience - June 6, 2009 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Thibaudeau, Geneviève; Doré, François Y.; Goulet, Sonia Source Type: journals