Instrumental performance following a shift in primary motivation depends on incentive learning.

Balleine, Bernard W.

doi:10.1037/0097-7403.18.3.236

Cited by 175 publications

(199 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…This would indicate an important role for incentive learning, terminology used to describe the process by which a shift in motivation causes changes to instrumental performance, but only if an animal has previous experience with the reinforcer in that particular motivational state (Balleine, 2001;Dickinson and Balleine, 2002). This incentive-motivational theory is supported by the finding that hungry rats only show increased food-seeking in an instrumental conditioning paradigm if they previously had the opportunity to selfadminister food in the deprived state (Balleine, 1992). Similarly, animals trained to self-administer heroin show increased drug-seeking during withdrawal only if they previously were given the opportunity to self-administer heroin in a state of withdrawal (Hutcheson et al, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 55%

Incentive Learning for Morphine-Associated Stimuli During Protracted Abstinence Increases Conditioned Drug Preference

Smith

Aston‐Jones

2013

Neuropsychopharmacol

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Previous studies from our laboratory found that rats express increased preference for drug-paired stimuli following 2 or 5 weeks of protracted abstinence from chronic drug exposure as compared with naive animals. Here, we show that this increased morphine place preference depends upon experiencing drug-stimulus pairings specifically in the abstinent state, indicating a critical role for incentive learning. Male Sprague Dawley rats were initially conditioned for morphine place preference (8 mg/kg) and then made dependent on morphine (by subcutaneous morphine pellets) and subjected to forced abstinence. Place preference was tested every 1-2 weeks with no additional drug-cue conditioning. In this paradigm, there was no difference between morphine-pelleted (dependent) and placebopelleted (non-dependent) rats in place preference at any time during abstinence (up to 6 weeks). However, these same morphinepelleted rats expressed significantly increased preference when they were subsequently re-conditioned for morphine place preference during protracted abstinence. Placebo-pelleted rats did not show enhanced preference after re-conditioning. These findings reveal that incentive learning has a key role in increased morphine place preference when drug is experienced during protracted abstinence. This indicates that incentive learning is involved not only in instrumental responding (as previously reported), but also in updating Pavlovianconditioned responses to morphine-associated stimuli. Therefore, enhanced morphine preference is not a direct consequence of the negative affective state of abstinence, but instead reflects increased acquisition of morphine-stimulus associations during abstinence. These results indicate that, during the development of addiction in humans, drug-associated stimuli acquire increasingly stronger incentive properties each time they are re-experienced.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 55%

Incentive Learning for Morphine-Associated Stimuli During Protracted Abstinence Increases Conditioned Drug Preference

Smith

Aston‐Jones

2013

Neuropsychopharmacol

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“…However, this result is still important, as the ability to display sensitivity to outcome value depends upon intact incentive memory (Balleine and Dickinson 1991;Parkes and Balleine 2013). Incentive memories are known to undergo reconsolidation (Wang et al 2005) and their loss would theoretically diminish instrumental responding.…”

Section: Sensitivity To Outcome Valuementioning

confidence: 99%

Reconsolidation of a well-learned instrumental memory

et al. 2014

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Once consolidated, memories are dynamic entities that go through phases of instability in order to be updated with new information, via a process of reconsolidation. The phenomenon of reconsolidation has been demonstrated in a wide variety of experimental paradigms. However, the memories underpinning instrumental behaviors are currently not believed to reconsolidate. We show that well-learned lever pressing in rats does undergo reconsolidation, which can be disrupted by systemic administration of the noncompetitive N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) antagonist (+)-5-methyl-10,11-dihydro-SH-dibenzo[a,d]cyclohepten-5,10-imine maleate (MK-801) when administered prior to a switch to a variable, but not fixed, ratio schedule. Disruption of reconsolidation resulted in a reduction in long-term lever pressing performance and diminished the sensitivity of behavior to contingency change. Further investigation demonstrated that expression of the reconsolidation impairment was not affected by outcome value, implying a deficit in a stimulus -response (S -R) process. The ability to disrupt the performance of well-learned instrumental behaviors is potentially of great importance in the development of reconsolidation-based clinical treatments for conditions that involve compulsive seeking behaviors.

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“…Learning how to achieve a pleasant state or how to avoid an unpleasant state (i.e., instrumental learning) can be controlled by two anatomically and functionally distinct systems that operate in tandem (Adams, 1982;Balleine and Dickinson, 1991): (1) a goal-directed system that learns causal relationships between an action and the incentive value of the outcome and is supported by the medial prefrontal cortex, the dorsomedial striatum, and the dorsomedial thalamus (Balleine and Dickinson, 1998a;Corbit et al, 2003;Killcross and Coutureau, 2003;Yin et al, 2005;Valentin et al, 2007); and (2) a dorsolateral striatum-dependent habit system that encodes associations between a response and preceding stimuli, without any link to the outcome that is engendered by the response (Yin et al, 2004Tricomi et al, 2009;Balleine and O'Doherty, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preventing the Stress-Induced Shift from Goal-Directed to Habit Action with a β-Adrenergic Antagonist

Schwabe

Höffken²,

Tegenthoff³

et al. 2011

J. Neurosci.

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Stress modulates instrumental action in favor of habit processes that encode the association between a response and preceding stimuli and at the expense of goal-directed processes that learn the association between an action and the motivational value of the outcome. Here, we asked whether this stress-induced shift from goal-directed to habit action is dependent on noradrenergic activation and may therefore be blocked by a ␤-adrenoceptor antagonist. To this end, healthy men and women were administered a placebo or the ␤-adrenoceptor antagonist propranolol before they underwent a stress or a control procedure. Shortly after the stress or control procedure, participants were trained in two instrumental actions that led to two distinct food outcomes. After training, one of the food outcomes was selectively devalued by feeding participants to satiety with that food. A subsequent extinction test indicated whether instrumental behavior was goal-directed or habitual. As expected, stress after placebo rendered participants' behavior insensitive to the change in the value of the outcome and thus habitual. After propranolol intake, however, stressed participants behaved, same as controls, goal-directed, suggesting that propranolol blocked the stress-induced bias toward habit behavior. Our findings show that the shift from goal-directed to habitual control of instrumental action under stress necessitates noradrenergic activation and could have important clinical implications, particularly for addictive disorders.

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Instrumental performance following a shift in primary motivation depends on incentive learning.

Cited by 175 publications

References 52 publications

Incentive Learning for Morphine-Associated Stimuli During Protracted Abstinence Increases Conditioned Drug Preference

Incentive Learning for Morphine-Associated Stimuli During Protracted Abstinence Increases Conditioned Drug Preference

Reconsolidation of a well-learned instrumental memory

Preventing the Stress-Induced Shift from Goal-Directed to Habit Action with a β-Adrenergic Antagonist

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