Effects of task-irrelevant cues and reinforcement delay on choice-escape learning following inescapable shock: Evidence for a deficit in selective attention.

Abstract

Prior exposure to inescapable shock has been reported to interfere with choice-escape learning, but several investigators have failed to obtain this effect. A series of five experiments examined the conditions under which choice-escape learning in an automated Y-maze is impaired by pretreatment with inescapable shock. Inescapably shocked rats made more errors and responded more slowly than did controls only when shock termination was delayed and task-irrelevant cues were present during choice-escape training. These findings are discussed in terms of information processing and neurochemical consequences of exposure to inescapable shock.

Stress weakens prefrontal networks: molecular insults to higher cognition

“…16). A key aspect of these findings was that the subject had to feel a lack of control over the stressor 17 , a factor also found in animal studies 18 . Later research in animals demonstrated that exposure to acute, uncontrollable stress impairs the working memory abilities of the PFC 19,20 , while tasks that rely on the habitual functions of basal ganglia circuits, for example 20,21 , or the emotional conditioning of the amygdala 22 are spared or even enhanced by stress exposure (Fig.…”

Stress and Depression: Insights from Animal Models

“…It is now clear that under some circumstances, stress can indeed impair learning ability, but this appears to be secondary to an impairment of attention: stressed animals are more fearful and therefore more easily distracted. 6 The attentional impairment is mediated by a functional incapacitation of noradrenergic transmission in the forebrain, 7Y8 and may indicate some functional correlates of the disorders of noradrenergic transmission in depressed patients, which have frequently been observed but have proved extremely dicult to interpret. 9 An additional problem for the learned helplessness model is that the behavioural impairments appear to owe rather more to the unpredictability of stress than to its uncontrollability.…”

Stress reactivity speeds basic encoding processes in infants

“…This shift downregulates complex flexible thinking dependent on frontal lobes while facilitating more rapid responses dependent on subcortical networks (Arnsten, 2009). In animals, elevated stress is associated with impaired selective attention (Minor, Jackson, & Maier, 1984), and a perseverative pattern of response that is consistent with prefrontal cortex dysfunction (Arnsten & GoldmanRakic, 1998). In adults, exposure to psychosocial stress leads to worse performance on attentional set-shifting, together with concomitant decreases in fronto-parietal connectivity (Liston, McEwen, & Casey, 2009).…”