The manifestation of "learned helplessness" in rats with various capacities for active avoidance
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Updated: Oct 13, 2026

Drosophila Passive Avoidance Behavior as a New Paradigm to Study Associative Aversive Learning
Published on: October 15, 2021
1Laboratory of the Physiology and Pathology of the Endocrine System, I.P. Pavlov Institute of Physiology, Saint Petersburg.
Abstract:
A riddance deficit in the shuttle chamber after unavoidable and avoidable stressor influences has been recorded in rats of two lines that differ in the capacity to form active avoidance: the KHA line-rats with a high rate of learning, and KLA-rats which learn poorly. Unavoidable stress leads to a riddance deficit only in KHA rats, whereas avoidable stress forms it only in KLA rats. It is hypothesized that "learned helplessness" represents a pathology of adaptive behavior, if unavoidable stress is applied to KHA rats, while in KLA rats., it is one of the forms of adaptive behavior as a result of avoidable stress.
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