Year: 2018
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Animals quickly learn to approach sources of food. Here, we characterize a form of behaviour in which rats made volitional orofacial contact with inactive feeders between trials of a self-paced operant task. This extraneous feeder sampling (EFS) was never reinforced and therefore imposed opportunity and effort costs. EFS decreased during initial training but persisted thereafter. The relative rate of EFS to operant responding increased with either novel changes to the operant chamber, or reward devaluation. We speculate this may function to increase exploration when the task is uncertain (early in learning or introduction of novel components), when the opportunity cost is low, or when the learned sensorimotor solution is compromised. Analysis of sex differences revealed females have a higher propensity for EFS, further supporting our speculations that EFS is rooted in exploratory systems. Preliminary results suggest the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is involved in the expression of this behaviour.
Author: Sienna Randolph
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2900029117