Outcome-specific Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) with alcohol cues and its extinction.

ABSTRACT: The acquired motivational impact of conditioned stimuli has been studied using the Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) task, where a cue paired with a reward is consistently shown to energize responses separately trained with that same reward ("specific" PIT). However, most alcohol studies have shown that alcohol-related cues elevate responses trained with either the same alcohol reward or with other non-alcoholic rewards ("general" PIT). The effects of extinction on this alcohol PIT effect have not been fully explored. We tested the hypothesis that cues signaling different-tasting alcohols might acquire specific craving reactions for those alcohols leading to specific PIT, but that these effects might be sensitive to extinction. Three experiments examined the specificity of PIT using

SUBMITTER: Alarcon DE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6422774 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature