Preventing the stress-induced shift from goal-directed to habit action with a β-adrenergic antagonist

Stress modulates instrumental action in favor of habit processes that encode the association between a response and preceding stimuli and at the expense of goal-directed processes that learn the association between an action and the motivational value of the outcome. Here, we asked whether this stress-induced shift from goal-directed to habit action is dependent on noradrenergic activation and may therefore be blocked by a β-adrenoceptor antagonist. To this end, healthy men and women were administered a placebo or the β-adrenoceptor antagonist propranolol before they underwent a stress or a control procedure. Shortly after the stress or control procedure, participants were trained in two instrumental actions that led to two distinct food outcomes. After training, one of the food outcomes was selectively devalued by feeding participants to satiety with that food. A subsequent extinction test indicated whether instrumental behavior was goal-directed or habitual. As expected, stress after placebo rendered participants' behavior insensitive to the change in the value of the outcome and thus habitual. After propranolol intake, however, stressed participants behaved, same as controls, goal-directed, suggesting that propranolol blocked the stress-induced bias toward habit behavior. Our findings show that the shift from goal-directed to habitual control of instrumental action under stress necessitates noradrenergic activation and could have important clinical implications, particularly for addictive disorders.