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Nucleus accumbens core lesions enhance two-way active avoidance.

N T Lichtenberg¹, V Kashtelyan¹, A C Burton²

¹Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, United States.

|November 27, 2013

Summary

Bilateral nucleus accumbens core (NAc) lesions initially impaired reward-guided decisions but improved learning and memory for active avoidance tasks, suggesting a complex role in motivation.

Keywords:

ANOVA CS DS NIH National Institutes of Health S-R US analysis of variance avoidance conditioned stimulus dorsal striatum escape nucleus accumbens rat stimulus–response striatum unconditioned stimulus

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Drosophila Passive Avoidance Behavior as a New Paradigm to Study Associative Aversive Learning

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Published on: October 15, 2021

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Behavioral Neuroscience
Decision-Making

Background:

The nucleus accumbens core (NAc) is primarily studied for its role in motivation toward appetitive outcomes.
Previous research indicates NAc is crucial for reward-guided decision-making.
The NAc's function in motivating behavior to avoid aversive outcomes is less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the impact of NAc lesions on performance in a two-way active avoidance task.
To explore the NAc's role in learning and retaining behaviors to prevent aversive stimuli.

Main Methods:

Bilateral lesions of the NAc were induced in rats.
Performance was assessed on a reward-guided decision-making task.
Acquisition and retention of a two-way active avoidance task were evaluated.

Main Results:

NAc lesions impaired performance on the reward-guided decision-making task.
Rats with NAc lesions demonstrated improved acquisition of the two-way active avoidance task.
Retention of the active avoidance task was also enhanced in rats with NAc lesions.

Conclusions:

The NAc plays a differential role in motivated behaviors.
NAc function is critical for appetitive motivation but may be inhibitory for aversive avoidance learning.
These findings highlight the complex involvement of the NAc in diverse behavioral contexts.