Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 19, 2026
09:35
Environmental Modulations of the Number of Midbrain Dopamine Neurons in Adult Mice
Published on: January 20, 2015
Environmental enrichment decreases responding for visual novelty.
Mary E Cain1, Thomas A Green, Michael T Bardo
1Kansas State University, Department of Psychology, 469 Bluemont Hall, Manhattan, KS 66506-5302, United States. mecain@ksu.edu <mecain@ksu.edu>
Behavioural Processes
|September 22, 2006
Summary
Environmental enrichment in rats reduces their motivation for novel visual stimuli, indicating that the effects of enrichment extend beyond drug rewards to general environmental novelty.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Rats in enriched conditions (EC) self-administer less amphetamine than isolated rats (IC).
- It's unknown if this effect extends to non-drug rewards, like novel stimuli.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if environmental enrichment decreases responses to novel visual stimuli.
Main Methods:
- Rats were raised in enriched (EC), isolated (IC), or social (SC) conditions.
- Operant conditioning assessed responses for a light cue, with and without sucrose pretraining.
Main Results:
- EC rats showed less responding for the light cue than IC rats, even after controlling for baseline differences.
- Sucrose pretraining reduced baseline response variations but EC rats still responded less.
Conclusions:
- Environmental enrichment decreases the incentive value of visual novelty.
- Enrichment's impact on reward processing generalizes to non-drug-related stimuli.
