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Feeder Approach between Trials Is Increased by Uncertainty and Affects Subsequent Choices

Animals quickly learn to approach sources of food. Here, we report on a form of approach in which rats made volitional orofacial contact with inactive feeders between trials of a self-paced operant task. This extraneous feeder sampling (EFS) was never reinforced and therefore imposed an opportunity...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Gruber, Aaron J., Thapa, Rajat, Randolph, Sienna H.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Society for Neuroscience 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5757189/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29313000
http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0437-17.2017
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author Gruber, Aaron J.
Thapa, Rajat
Randolph, Sienna H.
author_facet Gruber, Aaron J.
Thapa, Rajat
Randolph, Sienna H.
author_sort Gruber, Aaron J.
collection PubMed
description Animals quickly learn to approach sources of food. Here, we report on a form of approach in which rats made volitional orofacial contact with inactive feeders between trials of a self-paced operant task. This extraneous feeder sampling (EFS) was never reinforced and therefore imposed an opportunity and effort cost. EFS decreased during initial training but persisted thereafter. The relative rate of EFS to operant responding increased with novel changes to the operant chamber, reward devaluation by prefeeding, or lesions to the dorsolateral striatum. We speculate that this may function to increase exploration when the task is uncertain (early in learning or introduction of novel apparatus components), when the opportunity cost is low, or when the learned sensorimotor solution is compromised. Moreover, EFS strongly affected subsequent choices by triggering a lose-shift response away from the sampled feeder, even though it occurred outside of the trial context. This indicates that at least some behaviors occurring between trials impact future behaviors and should be considered in decision-making studies.
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spelling pubmed-57571892018-01-08 Feeder Approach between Trials Is Increased by Uncertainty and Affects Subsequent Choices Gruber, Aaron J. Thapa, Rajat Randolph, Sienna H. eNeuro New Research Animals quickly learn to approach sources of food. Here, we report on a form of approach in which rats made volitional orofacial contact with inactive feeders between trials of a self-paced operant task. This extraneous feeder sampling (EFS) was never reinforced and therefore imposed an opportunity and effort cost. EFS decreased during initial training but persisted thereafter. The relative rate of EFS to operant responding increased with novel changes to the operant chamber, reward devaluation by prefeeding, or lesions to the dorsolateral striatum. We speculate that this may function to increase exploration when the task is uncertain (early in learning or introduction of novel apparatus components), when the opportunity cost is low, or when the learned sensorimotor solution is compromised. Moreover, EFS strongly affected subsequent choices by triggering a lose-shift response away from the sampled feeder, even though it occurred outside of the trial context. This indicates that at least some behaviors occurring between trials impact future behaviors and should be considered in decision-making studies. Society for Neuroscience 2018-01-08 /pmc/articles/PMC5757189/ /pubmed/29313000 http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0437-17.2017 Text en Copyright © 2017 Gruber et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.
spellingShingle New Research
Gruber, Aaron J.
Thapa, Rajat
Randolph, Sienna H.
Feeder Approach between Trials Is Increased by Uncertainty and Affects Subsequent Choices
title Feeder Approach between Trials Is Increased by Uncertainty and Affects Subsequent Choices
title_full Feeder Approach between Trials Is Increased by Uncertainty and Affects Subsequent Choices
title_fullStr Feeder Approach between Trials Is Increased by Uncertainty and Affects Subsequent Choices
title_full_unstemmed Feeder Approach between Trials Is Increased by Uncertainty and Affects Subsequent Choices
title_short Feeder Approach between Trials Is Increased by Uncertainty and Affects Subsequent Choices
title_sort feeder approach between trials is increased by uncertainty and affects subsequent choices
topic New Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5757189/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29313000
http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0437-17.2017
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