Delay of punishment highlights differential vulnerability to developing addiction-like behavior toward sweet food.

ABSTRACT: Resistance to punishment is commonly used to measure the difficulty in refraining from rewarding activities when negative consequences ensue, which is a hallmark of addictive behavior. We recently developed a progressive shock strength (PSS) procedure in which individual rats can titrate the amount of punishment that they are willing to tolerate to obtain food rewards. Here, we investigated the effects of a range of delays (0-12 s) on resistance to punishment measured by PSS break points. As expected from delay discounting principles, we found that delayed shock was less effective as a punisher, as revealed by higher PSS breakpoints. However, this discounting effect was not equally distributed in the population of rats, and the introduction of a delay highlighted the existence of two popul

SUBMITTER: Solinas M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10954751 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature