Biological Psychology Commons^™

Comparison Between The Effects Of Acute Physical And Psychosocial Stress On Feedback-Based Learning, Xiao Yang, Brittany Nackley, Bruce H. Friedman

Psychology Faculty Publications

Stress modulates feedback-based learning, a process that has been implicated in declining mental function in aging and mental disorders. While acute physical and psychosocial stressors have been used interchangeably in studies on feedback-based learning, the two types of stressors involve distinct physiological and psychological processes. Whether the two types of stressors differentially influence feedback processing remains unclear. The present study compared the effects of physical and psychosocial stressors on feedback-based learning. Ninety-six subjects (Mage = 19.11 years; 50 female) completed either a cold pressor task (CPT) or mental arithmetic task (MAT), as the physical or psychosocial stressor, while electrocardiography and …

Motivated Attention To Social And Nonsocial Reward Images: Examining Relations With Externalizing Risk In Children, Adaeze C. Egwuatu

Doctoral Dissertations

Children that exhibit issues with externalizing behaviors often experience maladaptive outcomes in later life. Externalizing problems during middle childhood (e.g., 6-10 years old) are linked to issues with emotion regulation, which are, in turn, caused by disrupted attention and emotion reactivity to reward. Externalizing problems during this period have also been linked diminished processing of social reward stimuli, suggesting externalizing risk in children may be reflected in contrasting patterns in processing of non-social and social rewards. However, research comparing how differences in affective processing of specific reward content (i.e. social versus non-social) patterns relate to externalizing behavior within normative development …

Does Having Siblings Affect Caretaking Responses To Infants?, Kaitlin Rose Duskin

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Infant facial cues affect a variety of caretaking-related responses in adults. These effects have primarily been explored as they relate to parental care, however infants receive care from others who are not their parents and it would be important for any caregiver, regardless of parental status, to respond to infant cues effectively. Because siblings often fulfill a caregiver role in the home, this study investigated whether having siblings, younger siblings in particular, influences the way in which adults respond to infant cues. Contrary to my predictions, the findings in this study indicate that having siblings does not influence how rewarding …

Social Comparison Tendencies And The Reward Value Of Same-Sex Beauty Among Heterosexual Women, Melissa M. Martin Ms.

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Previous studies have suggested that heterosexual women, but not heterosexual men, find same sex beauty rewarding. This finding has been attributed to a “greater bisexual interest among heterosexual women”, but no other explanations have been offered or tested. The current study aimed to explore social comparison tendencies as a potential alternate explanation to this previously observed finding. Twenty-three heterosexual women completed a series of questionnaires designed to assess their social comparison tendencies (the social comparison orientation scale, the physical appearance comparison scale, and the intrasexual competition scale). They also completed a “pay-per-view” keypress task to measure the reward value of …

Experience-Dependent Changes In Nucleus Accumbens Activity Predict Cued Approach Learning: Contribution Of Nmda Receptors, Mercedes Vega Villar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Animals learn associations between environmental cues and the natural rewards they predict (e.g., food, water, sex). As a result, reward-predictive cues come to trigger vigorous reward-seeking responses. Many neurons in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) become excited upon presentation of an already-learned reward-predictive cue. These NAc responses encode the motivational value of the cue and are necessary for the expression of the subsequent approach behavior. However, the precise temporal relationship between the emergence of cue-evoked excitations in the NAc and the acquisition of cued approach behavior remains unknown. In Experiment 1, NAc activity was recorded as rats learned to approach a …

Ketamine Pre-Exposure Does Not Influence Later-Life Responses To Reward-Related Stimuli In Female C57bl/6 Mice, Israel Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Preclinical work indicates that exposure to traditional antidepressant medications, in adolescent and adult female subjects, alters reward-related behavior later in life. In recent years, the anesthetic ketamine (KET), now used as a fast-acting antidepressant, has shown promising therapeutic efficacy for the management of depression. However, the potential long-term behavioral consequences of KET exposure across development have not been thoroughly assessed. Thus, to address this issue, we examined if KET exposure, during adolescence or early adulthood, results in enduring alterations in responsivity to the rewarding properties of sucrose and cocaine later in life. Specifically, female C57BL/6 mice were randomly assigned to …

Age, Access, And Sweets-Motivation, Gehan Senthinathan

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Availability can have profound influence on the consumption of foods and drinks. The 2-phase intermittent-continuous protocol (ICP) examines sucrose solution intake in two groups of rats and finds intermittent access significantly increases intake. In Phase I, rats receive intermittent or continuous access to a 4% sucrose solution, and with adults this results in a long-term elevation (a doubling) in the intermittent group. In Phase II, when rats are shifted to common sucrose schedule, this difference is maintained. Adult rats given 16% sucrose in Phase I do not differ in consumption, but in Phase II with 4% sucrose, an unexpressed elevation …

Effort-Related Decision Making In Comt Variant Mice: Pharmacological Studies And Genetic Susceptibility To Motivational Dysfunction, Suzanne Cayer

Honors Scholar Theses

Effort-related decision making tasks in animals can model motivational symptoms in humans, which are a set of symptoms spanning a multitude of neuropsychiatric disorders, such as major depressive disorder and the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. The present studies aimed to evaluate the effort-related effects of the Val158Met polymorphism of human catechol-methyltransferase (COMT), by testing mice carrying either the human COMT Val (n=8) or Met allele (n=8) with Wild-Type control mice (n=15) by using concurrent FR2 and FR4/pellet choice tasks in a touchscreen operant conditioning apparatus. The Val158Met polymorphism has been repeatedly associated with neuropsychiatric disorders, and the Val allele has …

Contributions Of Appetitive And Aversive Motivational Systems To Decision-Making, Heather E. Soder

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Optimal decision-making entails outcome evaluation, comparing received costs and benefits with predicted costs and benefits. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain area with major connections to the appetitive and aversive motivation systems, may provide the neural substrate of this evaluation process. One way to measure the relative contribution of these systems on decision-making is to measure individual differences in risk-taking behaviors. For individuals who make risky choices, this evaluation step may be biased: some show a preference for immediate, short-term rewards (increased appetitive system), while devaluing the long-term consequences of their choices (decreased aversive system). However, most studies supporting …

Dopamine D1 And D3 Receptor Polypharmacology In Cocaine Reward And Cocaine Seeking, Ewa J. Galaj

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: In the search for efficacious pharmacotherapies to treat cocaine addiction much attention has been given to agents targeting D1 or D3 receptors because of the involvement of these receptors in cocaine-related behaviors. D1 and D3 receptor partial agonists and antagonists have been shown to reduce cocaine reward, reinstatement of cocaine seeking and conditioned place preference (CPP) in rodents and non-human primates. However, translation of these encouraging results with selective D1 or D3 receptor agents has been limited due to a number of factors including toxicity, poor pharmacokinetic properties and extrapyramidal and sedative side effects.

Purpose: Given the …

Acute And Chronic Effects Of Inhalants In Intracranial Self-Stimulation, Matthew Tracy

Theses and Dissertations

Inhalants are a loosely defined diverse group of volatile substances which people abuse. Despite widespread misuse of inhalants, there are limited preclinical methods available to study the reinforcement-like properties of inhalants. One procedure which has demonstrated substantial promise as a tool to investigate inhalant pharmacology is the intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS) procedure. ICSS utilizes pulses of electrical stimulation to the mesolimbic reward pathway to serve as a temporally defined and controlled operant reinforcer with a highly adjustable efficacy. The first aim of the project was to characterize the effects of commonly abused inhalants: including toluene, trichloroethane, nitrous oxide, isoflurane and R134a …

Modulation Of Variation By Response-Reward Spatial Proximity, Kenneth J. Leising, Chad M. Ruprecht, W. David Stahlman

Psychological Science

There has been a recent surge in the experimental investigation of the control of behavioral variability. Currently, it is understood that variability in behavior is predictably modulated by reinforcement parameters (e.g., a probability of reward delivery and reward magnitude). In two experiments, we investigated how spatial proximity between response and reward locations impacts the production of behavioral variability in both response rate and lever press duration. Rats were trained to lever press on two levers in a standard operant chamber that only differed from one another in their proximity to a food niche (i.e., Near vs. Far); a second experimental …

Reward Probability And The Variability Of Foraging Behavior In Rats, W. David Stahlman, Aaron P. Blaisdell

Psychological Science

The connection between reduced reinforcement probability and increased behavioral variability hasbeen well established in recent years (Gharib, Gade, & Roberts, 2004; Stahlman, Roberts, & Blaisdell, 2010). Researchers have hypothesized that this relationship is an adaptive one - it is beneficial for animals to increase behavioral variability in response to low likelihood of success,because this increase in variability potentially allows them to discover new behavioral options that are more highly rewarded. We conducted a study to investigate the relationship between behavioral variability and reward probability in an ecologically valid experimental task. We trained rats to search for hidden food in the …

Comparison Of Affective Analgesia And Conditioned Place Preference Following Cholinergic Activation Of, Elena Schifirnet

Wayne State University Dissertations

Activation of the dopaminergic mesolimbic reward circuitry that originates in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) is postulated to preferentially suppress affective reactions to noxious stimuli (affective analgesia, AA). VTA dopamine neurons are activated via cholinergic inputs, and we have observed that microinjections of the acetylcholine agonist carbachol suppressed vocalizations of rats that occur following administration of brief (1 sec) tail-shocks (vocalization afterdischarges = VAD). VADs are a validated rodent model of pain affect. In addition, the capacity of carbachol to support reinforcement appears to be regionally dependent within VTA. Ikemoto and Wise (2002) reported that carbachol was self-administered in the …