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A visual, position-independent instrumental reinforcer devaluation task for rats.

Elizabeth A West¹, Patrick A Forcelli, Alice Murnen

¹Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience, Georgetown University, 3970 Reservoir Rd NW, Washington, DC 20007, United States. eaw35@georgetown.edu

Journal of Neuroscience Methods

|November 25, 2010

Summary

Rats successfully adjusted their behavior in a novel task, demonstrating flexible goal-directed actions. This study developed a new method to assess reinforcer devaluation in rats, removing spatial cues.

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Area of Science:

Behavioral neuroscience
Cognitive science
Animal behavior

Background:

Flexible goal-directed behavior is crucial for survival and is studied using reinforcer devaluation tasks.
Existing tasks in rats differ from those in monkeys, potentially explaining species-specific results.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop a rat task for studying flexible goal-directed behavior that is independent of spatial cues.
To investigate if rats can adjust their responses based on devalued reinforcers when presented with simultaneous visual cues.

Main Methods:

A novel rat task was developed using two simultaneous visual cues, each predicting a different food reinforcer.
Rats were trained to respond to cues, then underwent selective satiation for one food reinforcer.
An extinction test assessed if rats reduced responding to the cue predicting the devalued food.

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Main Results:

Rats significantly reduced their choice of the cue predicting the devalued food compared to the cue predicting the non-devalued food (p<0.05).
The results indicate rats can discriminate simultaneously presented visual cues.
Selective satiation effectively devalued food reinforcers, and this devaluation was transferred to the associated visual cues.

Conclusions:

Rats exhibit flexible goal-directed behavior, adjusting their choices based on updated reinforcer values.
The developed task eliminates the confounding influence of spatial cues, allowing for more direct comparisons with studies in other species like monkeys.
This research provides a refined methodology for investigating decision-making and associative learning in rodents.