Cargando…

Attribution and Expression of Incentive Salience Are Differentially Signaled by Ultrasonic Vocalizations in Rats

During Pavlovian incentive learning, the affective properties of rewards are thought to be transferred to their predicting cues. However, how rewards are represented emotionally in animals is widely unknown. This study sought to determine whether 50-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) in rats may si...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Brenes, Juan C., Schwarting, Rainer K. W.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4105501/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25047234
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102414
_version_ 1782327377240522752
author Brenes, Juan C.
Schwarting, Rainer K. W.
author_facet Brenes, Juan C.
Schwarting, Rainer K. W.
author_sort Brenes, Juan C.
collection PubMed
description During Pavlovian incentive learning, the affective properties of rewards are thought to be transferred to their predicting cues. However, how rewards are represented emotionally in animals is widely unknown. This study sought to determine whether 50-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) in rats may signal such a state of incentive motivation to natural, nutritional rewards. To this end, rats learned to anticipate food rewards and, across experiments, the current physiological state (deprived vs. sated), the type of learning mechanism recruited (Pavlovian vs. instrumental), the hedonic properties of UCS (low vs. high palatable food), and the availability of food reward (continued vs. discontinued) were manipulated. Overall, we found that reward-cues elicited 50-kHz calls as they were signaling a putative affective state indicative of incentive motivation in the rat. Attribution and expression of incentive salience, however, seemed not to be an unified process, and could be teased apart in two different ways: 1) under high motivational state (i.e., hunger), the attribution of incentive salience to cues occurred without being expressed at the USVs level, if reward expectations were higher than the outcome; 2) in all experiments when food rewards were devalued by satiation, reward cues were still able to elicit USVs and conditioned anticipatory activity although reward seeking and consumption were drastically weakened. Our results suggest that rats are capable of representing rewards emotionally beyond apparent, immediate physiological demands. These findings may have translational potential in uncovering mechanisms underlying aberrant and persistent motivation as observed in drug addiction, gambling, and eating disorders.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-4105501
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2014
publisher Public Library of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-41055012014-07-23 Attribution and Expression of Incentive Salience Are Differentially Signaled by Ultrasonic Vocalizations in Rats Brenes, Juan C. Schwarting, Rainer K. W. PLoS One Research Article During Pavlovian incentive learning, the affective properties of rewards are thought to be transferred to their predicting cues. However, how rewards are represented emotionally in animals is widely unknown. This study sought to determine whether 50-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) in rats may signal such a state of incentive motivation to natural, nutritional rewards. To this end, rats learned to anticipate food rewards and, across experiments, the current physiological state (deprived vs. sated), the type of learning mechanism recruited (Pavlovian vs. instrumental), the hedonic properties of UCS (low vs. high palatable food), and the availability of food reward (continued vs. discontinued) were manipulated. Overall, we found that reward-cues elicited 50-kHz calls as they were signaling a putative affective state indicative of incentive motivation in the rat. Attribution and expression of incentive salience, however, seemed not to be an unified process, and could be teased apart in two different ways: 1) under high motivational state (i.e., hunger), the attribution of incentive salience to cues occurred without being expressed at the USVs level, if reward expectations were higher than the outcome; 2) in all experiments when food rewards were devalued by satiation, reward cues were still able to elicit USVs and conditioned anticipatory activity although reward seeking and consumption were drastically weakened. Our results suggest that rats are capable of representing rewards emotionally beyond apparent, immediate physiological demands. These findings may have translational potential in uncovering mechanisms underlying aberrant and persistent motivation as observed in drug addiction, gambling, and eating disorders. Public Library of Science 2014-07-21 /pmc/articles/PMC4105501/ /pubmed/25047234 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102414 Text en © 2014 Brenes, Schwarting http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Brenes, Juan C.
Schwarting, Rainer K. W.
Attribution and Expression of Incentive Salience Are Differentially Signaled by Ultrasonic Vocalizations in Rats
title Attribution and Expression of Incentive Salience Are Differentially Signaled by Ultrasonic Vocalizations in Rats
title_full Attribution and Expression of Incentive Salience Are Differentially Signaled by Ultrasonic Vocalizations in Rats
title_fullStr Attribution and Expression of Incentive Salience Are Differentially Signaled by Ultrasonic Vocalizations in Rats
title_full_unstemmed Attribution and Expression of Incentive Salience Are Differentially Signaled by Ultrasonic Vocalizations in Rats
title_short Attribution and Expression of Incentive Salience Are Differentially Signaled by Ultrasonic Vocalizations in Rats
title_sort attribution and expression of incentive salience are differentially signaled by ultrasonic vocalizations in rats
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4105501/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25047234
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102414
work_keys_str_mv AT brenesjuanc attributionandexpressionofincentivesaliencearedifferentiallysignaledbyultrasonicvocalizationsinrats
AT schwartingrainerkw attributionandexpressionofincentivesaliencearedifferentiallysignaledbyultrasonicvocalizationsinrats