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Increased Goal Tracking in Adolescent Rats Is Goal-Directed and Not Habit-Like

When a cue is paired with reward in a different location, some animals will approach the site of reward during the cue, a behavior called goal tracking, while other animals will approach and interact with the cue itself: a behavior called sign tracking. Sign tracking is thought to reflect a tendency...

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Autores principales: Rode, Analise N., Moghaddam, Bita, Morrison, Sara E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6971099/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31992975
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00291
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author Rode, Analise N.
Moghaddam, Bita
Morrison, Sara E.
author_facet Rode, Analise N.
Moghaddam, Bita
Morrison, Sara E.
author_sort Rode, Analise N.
collection PubMed
description When a cue is paired with reward in a different location, some animals will approach the site of reward during the cue, a behavior called goal tracking, while other animals will approach and interact with the cue itself: a behavior called sign tracking. Sign tracking is thought to reflect a tendency to transfer incentive salience from the reward to the cue. Adolescence is a time of heightened sensitivity to rewards, including environmental cues that have been associated with rewards, which may account for increased impulsivity and vulnerability to drug abuse. Surprisingly, however, studies have shown that adolescents are actually less likely to interact with the cue (i.e., sign track) than adult animals. We reasoned that adolescents might show decreased sign tracking, accompanied by increased apparent goal tracking, because they tend to attribute incentive salience to a more reward-proximal “cue”: the food magazine. On the other hand, adolescence is also a time of enhanced exploratory behavior, novelty-seeking, and behavioral flexibility. Therefore, adolescents might truly express more goal-directed reward-seeking and less inflexible habit-like approach to a reward-associated cue. Using a reward devaluation procedure to distinguish between these two hypotheses, we found that adolescents indeed exhibit more goal tracking, and less sign tracking, than a comparable group of adults. Moreover, adolescents’ goal tracking behavior is highly sensitive to reward devaluation and therefore goal-directed and not habit-like.
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spelling pubmed-69710992020-01-28 Increased Goal Tracking in Adolescent Rats Is Goal-Directed and Not Habit-Like Rode, Analise N. Moghaddam, Bita Morrison, Sara E. Front Behav Neurosci Behavioral Neuroscience When a cue is paired with reward in a different location, some animals will approach the site of reward during the cue, a behavior called goal tracking, while other animals will approach and interact with the cue itself: a behavior called sign tracking. Sign tracking is thought to reflect a tendency to transfer incentive salience from the reward to the cue. Adolescence is a time of heightened sensitivity to rewards, including environmental cues that have been associated with rewards, which may account for increased impulsivity and vulnerability to drug abuse. Surprisingly, however, studies have shown that adolescents are actually less likely to interact with the cue (i.e., sign track) than adult animals. We reasoned that adolescents might show decreased sign tracking, accompanied by increased apparent goal tracking, because they tend to attribute incentive salience to a more reward-proximal “cue”: the food magazine. On the other hand, adolescence is also a time of enhanced exploratory behavior, novelty-seeking, and behavioral flexibility. Therefore, adolescents might truly express more goal-directed reward-seeking and less inflexible habit-like approach to a reward-associated cue. Using a reward devaluation procedure to distinguish between these two hypotheses, we found that adolescents indeed exhibit more goal tracking, and less sign tracking, than a comparable group of adults. Moreover, adolescents’ goal tracking behavior is highly sensitive to reward devaluation and therefore goal-directed and not habit-like. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-01-14 /pmc/articles/PMC6971099/ /pubmed/31992975 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00291 Text en Copyright © 2020 Rode, Moghaddam and Morrison. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Behavioral Neuroscience
Rode, Analise N.
Moghaddam, Bita
Morrison, Sara E.
Increased Goal Tracking in Adolescent Rats Is Goal-Directed and Not Habit-Like
title Increased Goal Tracking in Adolescent Rats Is Goal-Directed and Not Habit-Like
title_full Increased Goal Tracking in Adolescent Rats Is Goal-Directed and Not Habit-Like
title_fullStr Increased Goal Tracking in Adolescent Rats Is Goal-Directed and Not Habit-Like
title_full_unstemmed Increased Goal Tracking in Adolescent Rats Is Goal-Directed and Not Habit-Like
title_short Increased Goal Tracking in Adolescent Rats Is Goal-Directed and Not Habit-Like
title_sort increased goal tracking in adolescent rats is goal-directed and not habit-like
topic Behavioral Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6971099/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31992975
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00291
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