Assessing the aversive nature of pain with an operant approach/avoidance paradigm

The Use of an FR1 Schedule Operant Approach-Avoidance Paradigm to Measure the Aversiveness of Neuropathic and Inflammatory Pain

“…However, there are also possibilities that preclinical chronic pain manipulations have produced weak evidence for the depression of operant responding as a sign of the motivational components of pain or pain affect (53). Taken together, it still remains unclear what exactly the AAP is quantifying since there was no lever-press suppression in the unilateral pain conditions, an outcome that was previously seen in a single lever paradigm by (30) used similar aspects of the AAP. Results from this previous study led us to hypothesize a decrease in lever-pressing in response to the noxious stimuli after induction into the respective pain condition.…”

“…Operant conditioning seeks to shape behavior by its consequences, within the theory of a "three-term contingency, " such that a discriminative stimulus (SD) is presented to elicit a behavioral response (R), with the consequent stimulus (SC) being applied of the intention to alter the learning association between the FIGURE 3 | Percent success (±SEM) in lever-pressing for left and right levers and pooled left and right omissions across pain conditions for baseline (A) and test days (B). Success rates were quantified by using an individual number of lever-presses for the paradigm on test day and dividing by the total number of trials for each side (30). There were no differences in success rates for lever-pressing or omissions to the AAP.…”

“…Although the research into the affective dimension of pain has been a critical enhancement, very little research has been directed toward understanding the cognitive dimension. Concurrent disruption of homeostasis from different stressors can promote competition between the drives [LaGraize et al, 2004; ( 30 , 31 )]. Approach-avoidance conflicts utilize this phenomenon to pose a unique situation associated with both reward and punishment such that an animal must choose which to approach and which to avoid.…”

Pain and Decision-Making: Interrelated Through Homeostasis

“…Affective/motivational and cognitive/evaluative component of pain; arousal; attention; control center of pain modulation; errors in prediction [55,56] Impulsive unconscious behaviors [57] Pain And Decision-Making Affective/motivational and cognitive/evaluative component of pain; pain modulation; attention [58] Social/moral reasoning [35]; Attention; Learning; adaptive decision-making; integration of associative information [59] Ventromedial: working-memory; impulsivity; future consquences; emotional salience of reward or punishment [60] Primary Somatosensory (S1) Sensory/discrimative and cognitive/evaluative component of pain; attention; previous experience; pain intensity [13,61] ?…”

A novel affective–motivational‐based Overground System for detecting spinal cord injury‐associated thermal and mechanical hypersensitivity in rats

“…These paradigms are based on the natural avoidance of hypersensitive areas that animals have and that when a stimulus is presented, escape or avoidance indicates that the animal finds that stimulus aversive (LaBuda and Fuchs, ; McNabb et al., ; Gerber et al., ). Escape and/or avoidance paradigms that study nociception at this level include the conditioned place preference/aversion (Sufka, ; LaBuda and Fuchs, ; Johansen and Fields, ; Davoody et al., ), place escape/avoidance paradigm (Fuchs and McNabb, ; McNabb et al., ; Lee‐Kubli et al., ), passive avoidance test (Ness et al., ) and operant escape (Mauderli et al., ; Vierck et al., ; Neubert et al., ; Salcido et al., ). Early system utilized mainly classical conditioning while later system incorporated both classical and operant conditioning paradigms (Li, ).…”