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Increased sign-tracking behavior in adolescent rats.

Nicole E DeAngeli1, Sarah B Miller1, Heidi C Meyer1

  • 1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.

Developmental Psychobiology
|September 10, 2017
PubMed
Summary

Adolescent rats show heightened sensitivity to reward cues compared to adults. This suggests that during adolescence, predictive cues gain stronger motivational value, potentially explaining increased reward-seeking behaviors.

Keywords:
autoshapingconditioningincentive saliencejuvenile

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Behavioral Science

Background:

  • Adolescence is a critical developmental period characterized by heightened sensitivity to rewards.
  • Understanding how reward-predictive cues influence behavior during this stage is crucial for explaining adolescent risk-taking and addiction vulnerability.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether conditioned stimuli (CSs) acquire greater incentive salience in adolescent rats compared to young adult rats.
  • To examine the impact of social isolation rearing and food restriction on this developmental difference.

Main Methods:

  • An autoshaping procedure was employed using rats under social isolation and food restriction.
  • Rats were trained with a lever (CS+) paired with food (US) and a second lever (CS-) unpaired.
  • Behavioral responses (lever pressing, sign-tracking) were measured to assess incentive salience acquisition.

Main Results:

  • Adolescent rats exhibited significantly higher rates of lever pressing and a greater percentage of trials with lever pressing compared to young adult rats.
  • These differences persisted even after adolescents reached young adulthood, indicating a lasting effect.
  • All rats displayed sign-tracking behavior, indicating cue-elicited motivation independent of response contingency.

Conclusions:

  • Conditioned stimuli gain greater incentive salience during adolescence compared to young adulthood, particularly under conditions of social isolation and food restriction.
  • This heightened sensitivity to reward cues in adolescence may contribute to the observed hyper-responsiveness to reward-related stimuli during this developmental period.
  • Findings support the hypothesis that adolescent brains are particularly sensitive to the motivational impact of reward predictors.