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Updated: May 8, 2026

Aversive Associative Learning and Memory Formation by Pairing Two Chemicals in Caenorhabditis elegans
Published on: June 23, 2022
Learning without Memory
1Professor Emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles and Adjunct Professor, Western Washington University.
Abstract:
After a CS-US learning trial, powerful feedback (FB) selectively modulates the hedonic value of the US, perhaps affecting the CS as well. FB. operates regardless of the subject's attributions or awareness, often influencing the subject's unconscious motives in a single trial. Most of the evidence comes from feeding research where the taste US and the internal FB are independently manipulated, but similar influences are at work with painful, thermal and sexual USs in a wide variety of species including humans. Implications for cognitive theorizing and neural research on mechanisms of learning are discussed.
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