Abstract
Rats with bilateral lesions of the ventral striatal nucleus accumbens failed to acquire Pavlovian second-order conditioning to auditory stimuli paired with visual stimuli that had previously received first-order pairings with food. This deficit in second-order conditioning was specific to learning driven by incentive properties of the first-order cues, and was observed whether the first-order training had occurred prior to or after lesion surgery. Lesions also produced deficits in the display of conditioned responses to the first-order conditioned stimulus, but only when they were made after first-order training. These results suggest a specific role for the ventral striatum in acquiring and expressing incentive properties of conditioned stimuli through second-order conditioning, as well as a more general role in expressing previously acquired Pavlovian conditioned responses.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 2589-2599 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | European Journal of Neuroscience |
Volume | 38 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 2013 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Conditioned reinforcement
- Incentive learning
- Nucleus accumbens
- Rat
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Neuroscience