Sign-tracking behavior is sensitive to outcome devaluation in a devaluation context-dependent manner: implications for analyzing habitual behavior.

ABSTRACT: Motivationally attractive cues can draw in behavior in a phenomenon termed incentive salience. Incentive cue attraction is an important model for animal models of drug seeking and relapse. One question of interest is the extent to which the pursuit of motivationally attractive cues is related to the value of the paired outcome or can become unrelated and habitual. We studied this question using a sign-tracking (ST) paradigm in rats, in which a lever stimulus preceding food reward comes to elicit conditioned lever-interaction behavior. We asked whether reinforcer devaluation by means of conditioned taste aversion, a classic test of habitual behavior, can modify ST to incentive cues, and whether this depends upon the manner in which reinforcer devaluation takes place. In contrast to several

SUBMITTER: Amaya KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7079568 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature