Pavlovian fear conditioning is a widely used behavioral paradigm for studying associative learning in rodents. Despite early recognition that subjects may engage in a variety of both conditioned and unconditioned responses, the last several decades have seen the field narrow its focus to measure freezing as the sole indicator of conditioned fear.…

Fear-motivated avoidance extinction memory is prone to hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)-dependent reconsolidation upon recall. Here, we show that extinction memory recall activates mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) in dorsal CA1, and that post-recall inhibition of this kinase hinders avoidance extinction memory persistence…

The effect of repetitive training on learned behavior has been an important subject in neuroscience. In instrumental conditioning in mammals, learned action early in training is often goal-driven and controlled by outcome expectancy, but as training progresses, it becomes more habitual and insensitive to outcome devaluation. Similarly, we recently…

Dopamine plays a critical role in behavioral tasks requiring interval timing (time perception in a seconds-to-minutes range). Although some studies demonstrate the role of dopamine receptors as a controller of the speed of the internal clock, other studies demonstrate their role as a controller of motivation. Both D1 dopamine receptors (D1DRs) and…

In an ever-changing environment, survival depends on learning which stimuli represent threat, and also on updating such associations when circumstances shift. It has been claimed that humans can acquire physiological responses to threat-associated stimuli even when they are unaware of them, but the role of awareness in updating threat…

Behavioral and electrophysiology studies have shown that humans possess a certain self-awareness of their individual timing ability. However, conflicting reports raise concerns about whether humans can discern the direction of their timing error, calling into question the extent of this timing awareness. To understand the depth of this ability,…

According to dual-process theory, recognition memory performance draws upon two processes, familiarity and recollection. The relative contribution to recognition memory are commonly distinguished in humans by analyzing receiver-operating-characteristics (ROC) curves; analogous methods are more complex and very rare in animals but fast familiarity…

Most experimental preparations demonstrate a role for dorsolateral striatum (DLS) in stimulus-response, but not outcome-based, learning. Here, we assessed DLS involvement in a touchscreen-based reversal task requiring mice to update choice following a change in stimulus-reward contingencies. In vivo single-unit recordings in the DLS showed…

We present evidence that experience and cholinergic modulation in an early sensory network interact to improve certainty about olfactory stimuli. The data we present are in agreement with existing theoretical ideas about the functional role of acetylcholine but highlight the importance of early sensory networks in addition to cortical networks. We…

While interest in active avoidance has recently been resurgent, many concerns relating to the nature of this form of learning remain unresolved. By separating stimulus and response acquisition, aversive Pavlovian-instrumental transfer can be used to measure the effect of avoidance learning on threat processing with more control than typical…

In obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), functional behaviors such as checking that a door is locked become dysfunctional, maladaptive, and debilitating. However, it is currently unknown how aversive and appetitive motivations interact to produce functional and dysfunctional behavior in OCD. Here we show a double dissociation in the effects of…

In two instrumental conditioning experiments with rats, we examined the impacts of acquisition and extinction cues on ABC renewal of instrumental behavior. Animals were reinforced with food for lever pressing in one context, followed by extinction of the response in a second one. Presentations of a brief tone accompanied extinction in Experiment 1…

While results from many past studies have implicated the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) in mediating the expression of sustained negative affect, recent studies have highlighted a more complex role for BNST that includes aspects of fear learning in addition to defensive responding. As BNST is thought to encode ambiguous or…

Signaled active avoidance (SAA) behavior requires the suppression of defensive reactions, such as freezing, that conflict with the avoidance response. The neural mechanisms of this inhibitory process are not well understood. Here, we demonstrate that ventromedial prefrontal cortex projections to the nucleus reuniens of the thalamus are recruited…

A reminder can render consolidated memory labile and susceptible to amnesic agents during a reconsolidation window. For the case of threat memory (also termed fear memory), it has been suggested that extinction training during this reconsolidation window has the same disruptive impact. This procedure could provide a powerful therapeutic principle…