RESUMO
BACKGROUND: A progressive decrease in spontaneous locomotion with repeated exposure to a novel environment has been assessed using both within and between-session measures. While both are well-established and reliable measurements, neither are useful alone as methods to concurrently assess treatment effects on acquisition and retention of habituation. NEW METHOD: We report a behavioral method that measures habituation by combining the within and between measurements of locomotion. We used a 30 min session divided into 6 five min blocks. In the first novel environment session activity was maximal in the first 5 min block but was reduced to a low level by the sixth block, indicative of within-session habituation. Using 8 daily sessions, we showed that this terminal block low level of activity progressed incrementally to the first block to achieve complete habituation. RESULTS/COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHODS: Within-session activity across sessions was used to identify different stages of between session habituation. It was then possible to assess drug treatment effects from partial to complete habituation, so that treatment effects on retention of the previously acquired partial habituation, expressed as a reversion to an earlier within session habituation pattern (retrograde amnesia assessment), as well as the effects on new learning by the failure in subsequent sessions to acquire complete between-session habituation (anterograde amnesia assessment). CONCLUSIONS: The use of spontaneous motor activity to assess learning and memory effects provides the opportunity to assess direct treatment effects on behavior and motor activity in contrast to many learning and memory models.
Assuntos
Habituação Psicofisiológica , Receptores de N-Metil-D-Aspartato , Humanos , Aprendizagem , Amnésia RetrógradaRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Reduced locomotion with repeated exposure to a novel environment is often used as a measure of the basic adaptive learning process of habituation. While this is a well-established and reliable measure of habituation, it is not useful for the investigation of neurobiological changes before and after habituation because of the uncontrolled differential activity levels in a novel versus habituated environment. In this study we report a behavioral method that uses spontaneous locomotion to measure habituation, in which the total spontaneous locomotion in an initially novel environment does not change with repeated testing but, the ratio of central to peripheral activity does change and is indicative of habituation. The test sessions are brief (5 min) and the locomotion is measured in 2 separate zones. The peripheral zone comprises 8/9 of the test arena and the central zone 1/9 of the arena. RESULTS/COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHODS: In contrast to methods that use between-session reductions in locomotion to assess habituation, this method employs brief test sessions in which overall activity between sessions does not change, but the distribution of locomotion in the periphery versus the central zone of the arena does change. The brevity of the test session also enables us to utilize post-trial drug treatment protocols to impact memory consolidation. CONCLUSIONS: The progressive change in the central/peripheral activity ratio with repeated testing can be determined independently of total activity and provides a habituation acquisition function that permits the measurement of neurobiological changes without the complication of effects related to changes in locomotor activity per se. The present report also presents evidence that this method can be used with post-trial drug treatment protocols to study the learning and memory effects of the post-trial treatments without the use of explicit rewards and punishments.
Assuntos
Habituação Psicofisiológica , Locomoção , AprendizagemRESUMO
Morphine administered shortly after exposure to a novel environment induces potent locomotor stimulant conditioning. Environmental novelty is important as pre-exposure (PE) to a stimulus can attenuate the capacity to acquire conditioned stimulus (CS). Here, the importance of environmental novelty for the efficacy of an open-field to become a CS for elicitation of a morphine conditioned response was assessed by comparing the effects of morphine administered post-trial following a 5 min exposure to a novel environment versus a PE environment. Four groups of rats (2 vehicle and 2 morphine groups) were used. Two groups received ten daily 5 min non-drug PEs to an open-field arena and the other two groups were not pre-exposed to the environment. Subsequently, all groups received post-trial injections of either vehicle or morphine immediately after each of five daily 5 min sessions in the open-field. Importantly, on the first day of testing prior to the first post-test morphine administration, the locomotor activity of the novel and PE groups was not different. Over the 5 post-trial morphine treatments, the activity of the PE morphine group, the PE vehicle and the novel environment vehicle groups did not change and were equivalent. In contrast, in the novel environment morphine group, a conditioned hyper-activity response increased with repeated post-trial morphine treatments. For the morphine group it is suggested that the novel environment initiated a post-trial stimulus trace that occurred in temporal contiguity with the post-trial drug response and enabled the trace to become a CS for the morphine unconditioned response. In contrast, PE induced a latent inhibition effect in the PE morphine group, thus the post-trial CS trace was insufficient to become associated to the morphine response and no conditioning occurred. In addition to conventional drug induced Pavlovian delay conditioning, the findings are suggestive of drug induced Pavlovian trace conditioning.
Assuntos
Condicionamento Clássico/efeitos dos fármacos , Morfina/administração & dosagem , Animais , Comportamento Animal/efeitos dos fármacos , Masculino , Morfina/farmacologia , RatosRESUMO
Morphine has substantial pro-dopamine effects and in rodents, this is expressed in behavior as increased locomotor activation. Here we administered post-trial 3 dose levels of morphine (3.0, 5.0 and 10.0â¯mg/kg) or vehicle either immediately or after a 15â¯min delay to different groups of rats following a brief (5â¯min) exposure to a novel test environment. Three post-trial injections were administered on three successive days. One day after the first post-trial morphine injections, the non-drug activity levels in the immediate post-trial morphine treatment groups were selectively increased compared to vehicle groups. The activity effects were potentiated with repeated immediate post-trial morphine treatments but the same morphine treatments given after a 15â¯min post-trial delay did not increase activity in any tests and did not differ from vehicle. Subsequently, all groups were given 5 daily non-drug test sessions as an extinction protocol. The increased activity levels in the 5.0 and 10.0â¯mg/kg immediate post-trial morphine groups were sustained over the five extinction sessions. Two days later all groups were given a 30â¯min non-drug test and the 5.0 and 10.0 immediate post-trial groups continued to exhibit a heightened level of activity relative to vehicle restricted to the initial 10â¯min of the test session. There were no other group differences. The findings that the locomotor stimulant effects in the immediate post-test morphine groups occurred on non-drug tests and that the same morphine treatments given 15â¯min post-test were without effect are consistent with a conditioned morphine effect. In that acquisition of familiarization with a new environment is a basic learning process that engages consolidation mechanisms, it is possible that the immediate post-trial morphine effects that occur concurrently with consolidation can become incorporated into this consolidation process and subsequently be expressed as a conditioned drug effect.
Assuntos
Condicionamento Operante , Morfina/administração & dosagem , Animais , Agonistas de Dopamina/farmacologia , Relação Dose-Resposta a Droga , Masculino , Ratos , Ratos WistarRESUMO
This investigation was undertaken to compare the sensitization/conditioned effects induced by apomorphine given pre-trial versus administered immediately post-trial or 15â¯min post-trial. We measured the effects on locomotor activity of 5 daily apomorphine treatments induced by an inhibitory low auto-receptor dose (0.05â¯mg/kg) and a stimulatory high postsynaptic dose (2.0â¯mg/kg). Three sets of four groups were used and each set of four groups was comprised of two vehicle and two apomorphine groups (0.05/2.0 apomorphine). The only difference among the three sets of four groups was when the treatments were administered relative to placement in the novel environment. One set received the treatment pre-test, another set was injected immediately after and the third set injected 15â¯min after 5â¯min test sessions in a novel environment. The repeated pre and immediate post-test apomorphine treatments induced locomotor sensitization over the 5â¯days of treatment. The low dose pre and immediate post-test treatments progressively decreased locomotion and the high dose pre and immediate post-test progressively increased locomotion. Critically, the tests for the immediate post-test groups were non-drug and for both the pre-test and immediate post-test groups, sensitization effects did not occur until the second test day. To control for non-associative apomorphine effects, the same apomorphine treatments were given post-test after a 15â¯minute delay and were found to be equivalent to vehicle. In a subsequent conditioning test, both the pre and immediate post-test low dose apomorphine groups showed conditioned behavioral inhibition and the pre and immediate post-test high dose apomorphine groups showed conditioned behavioral stimulation. We propose that the inhibitory low dose apomorphine decreased the salience/incentive of the novel environment association and thereby decreased the behavioral response and conversely that the high dose excitatory apomorphine treatment increased the salience/incentive value of the novel environment association and potentiated the behavioral response.
Assuntos
Apomorfina/farmacologia , Condicionamento Clássico/efeitos dos fármacos , Agonistas de Dopamina/farmacologia , Animais , Apomorfina/administração & dosagem , Agonistas de Dopamina/administração & dosagem , Relação Dose-Resposta a Droga , Masculino , Ratos , Ratos WistarRESUMO
Schizophrenia is a debilitating disorder that may have a neurodevelopmental origin. For this reason, animal models based on neonatal insults or manipulations have been extensively used to demonstrate schizophrenia-related behaviors. Among those, the neonatal ventral hippocampus lesion (nVHL) is largely used as a model of schizophrenia-related behavior as it mimics behavioral and neurochemical abnormalities often seen in schizophrenic patients including hyperlocomotion in a novel environment. To investigate the neuroanatomical basis of coding novelty in the nVHL rat, we assessed the behavioral locomotor activity paradigm in a novel environment and measured expression of c-Fos, a marker of neural activation, in brain regions involved in the process of coding novelty or locomotion. Upon reaching adulthood, nVHL rats showed hyperlocomotion in the novel environment paradigm. Moreover, in nVHL rats the expression of c-Fos was greater in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and CA1 region of the dorsal hippocampus compared to sham rats. Whereas similar expression of c-Fos was observed in the basolateral amygdala, nucleus accumbens and dentate gyrus region of hippocampus of nVHL and sham rats. These results suggest that the nVHL disrupts the neural activity in the PFC and CA1 region of hippocampus in the process of coding novelty in the rat.
Assuntos
Hipocampo/metabolismo , Neurônios/metabolismo , Córtex Pré-Frontal/metabolismo , Proteínas Proto-Oncogênicas c-fos/metabolismo , Esquizofrenia/metabolismo , Animais , Animais Recém-Nascidos , Feminino , Núcleo Accumbens/metabolismo , Ratos Sprague-DawleyRESUMO
In contextual drug conditioning, the onset of the drug treatment is contiguous with the contextual cues. Evidence suggests that drug conditioning also can occur if there is a discontinuity between the onset of the drug effect and offset of the contextual cues. Here we examine whether post-trial contextual drug conditioning conforms to several Pavlovian conditioning tenets namely: acquisition, extinction and spontaneous recovery. Six groups of rats received apomorphine (0.05 or 2.0mg/kg) and vehicle immediately or after a 15min delay following a 5min non-drug exposure to an open-field during three successive days (conditioning phase). The extinction phase occurred on days 4-8, in which all post-trial treatments were vehicle injections. After 2days of non-testing, the final test was performed. The results showed that on the first test day, the activity levels of the 6 groups were statistically equivalent. On test day 2, there were marked differences in activity levels selectively between the two immediate post-trial apomorphine treatment groups. The immediate low dose apomorphine group displayed a reduction in activity and the immediate high dose group an increase in activity relative to their day 1 levels. The activity levels of both vehicle groups and both apomorphine delay groups remained equivalent to their day 1 activity levels. On test day 3, the differences in activity levels between the two immediate post-trial apomorphine groups increased but the activity levels of the vehicle groups and the 15min delay post-trial apomorphine groups remained unchanged. In the extinction phase, the conditioned activity differences between the two immediate post-trial apomorphine groups were gradually eliminated. During the final test, the activity differences between the immediate post-trial apomorphine groups were partially restored, indicative of spontaneous recovery. These findings are consistent with several basic elements of Pavlovian conditioning and are supportive of drug induced trace conditioning.
Assuntos
Apomorfina/farmacologia , Condicionamento Clássico/efeitos dos fármacos , Dopamina/farmacologia , Animais , Masculino , Ratos , Ratos WistarRESUMO
RATIONALE: Phosphorylated extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) has been used to identify brain areas activated by exogenous stimuli including psychostimulant drugs. OBJECTIVE: Assess the role of the amygdala in emotional responses. METHODS: Experimental manipulations were performed in which environmental familiarity was the variable. To provide the maximal degree of familiarity, ERK was measured after removal from the home cage and re-placement back into the same cage. To maximize exposure to an unfamiliar environment, ERK was measured following placement into a novel open field. To assess whether familiarity was the critical variable in the ERK response to the novel open field, ERK was also measured after either four or eight placements into the same environment. ERK quantification was carried out in the amygdala, frontal cortex, and the nucleus accumbens. RESULTS: After home cage re-placement, ERK activation was found in the frontal cortex and nucleus accumbens but was absent in the amygdala. Following placement in a novel environment, ERK activation was more prominent in the amygdala than the frontal cortex or nucleus accumbens. In contrast, with habituation to the novel environment, ERK phosphors declined markedly in the amygdala but increased in the frontal cortex and nucleus accumbens to the level observed following home cage re-placement. CONCLUSIONS: The differential responsiveness of the amygdala versus the frontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens to a novel versus a habituated environment is consistent with a reciprocal interaction between these neural systems and points to their important role in the mediation of behavioral activation to novelty and behavioral inactivation with habituation.
Assuntos
Tonsila do Cerebelo/efeitos dos fármacos , Meio Ambiente , Lobo Frontal/efeitos dos fármacos , Sistema de Sinalização das MAP Quinases/efeitos dos fármacos , Animais , Estimulantes do Sistema Nervoso Central/farmacologia , Masculino , Atividade Motora/efeitos dos fármacos , Núcleo Accumbens/efeitos dos fármacos , Ratos , Ratos WistarRESUMO
The Pavlovian conditioning of drug effects has frequently been demonstrated using protocols that are variants of Pavlovian delay conditioning. We undertook to determine if drug conditioning could be induced using a Pavlovian trace conditioning procedure. Rats were tested in a novel open-field environment for 5 min and in post-trial phase were injected either with vehicle, 2.0 mg/kg or 0.05 mg/kg apomorphine immediately or after a delay of 15 min. The procedure was repeated three times and subsequently a 30 min non-drug test was given. The vehicle and 15 min post-trial apomorphine groups did not differ and in the 30 min test their locomotion scores were equivalent to another vehicle group tested for the first time. The group that received 2.0 mg/kg apomorphine immediately post-trial had a progressive increase in activity over the three sessions and also initially in the 30 min test. The results for the 0.05 mg/kg immediate post-test group were a mirror image of the 2.0 mg/kg apomorphine group. Post-trial apomorphine treatments can induce potent conditioned effects indicative of the efficacy of trace conditioning of drug effects. These finding suggest that trace conditioning may be an important contributor to the potency of conditioned-drug effects in the development of drug addiction.