Causal superlearning arising from interactions among cues.

The acquisition of fear of movement-related pain and associative learning: A novel pain-relevant human fear conditioning paradigm

Notwithstanding the success of CBT, it is relatively unknown how individuals can better profit from corrective learning experiences. Various theories postulate that prediction errors – the difference between what is occurring and what is expected – are the driving force of associative (re)learning. While prediction errors are typically operationalized as violations of cognitive outcome expectancies, direct physiological indices of prediction errors could capture potentially more essential automatic and emotional processes in associative learning. Although physiological responses have previously been suggested to reflect prediction errors, it remains elusive if these measures actually predict changes in subsequent conditioned responding. In three fear-conditioning experiments, we compared pupil dilation and skin conductance responses to unexpected outcomes – unconditioned stimulus (US) presentations or omissions – with expected outcomes, and tested whether outcome responses predicted actual changes in subsequent conditioned responding. We found evidence for increased physiological responses to unexpected outcomes, but the results were inconsistent across experiments. Furthermore, only pupil responses to US presentations consistently predicted an increase in conditioned responding, making it difficult to reconcile our findings with associative learning models. Both pupil dilation and skin conductance can thus index unexpected outcomes, but the relationship of these responses to future learning is not evident and requires further investigation.

Event Abstract Back to Event Restoring the males’ honor: Pavlovian PER conditioning of visual cues in bumblebee drones Leonie Lichtenstein1, Frank M. Sommerlandt1* and Johannes Spaethe1 1 University of Würzburg, Department of Behavioral Physiology and Sociobiology, Germany Learning visual cues is essential in bees for orientation, as well as for the recognition of nest sites, food sources and mating partners. A well-established method for a quantitative evaluation of learning and memory in bees under controlled environmental conditions is the proboscis extension response (PER). After several decades of failure, the PER assay has recently been successfully applied for the associative conditioning of visual stimuli in intact honeybees (Dobrin and Fahrbach, 2012) and bumblebees (Riveros and Gronenberg, 2012). Research using the PER method has primarily focused on workers, whereas males were largely neglected. In the present study, we tested intact Bombus terrestris drones in different visual learning tasks using classical PER conditioning and different monochromatic light stimuli (435, 488, and 528nm). Individuals were confronted with absolute (A+) and differential (A+ vs. B-) conditioning tasks. Furthermore, drones were tested to determine if they can retrieve the learned stimulus after two hours and transfer this information to a subsequent discrimination task in a Y-maze. Our results indicate that drones are capable of discriminating between monochromatic light stimuli, and they attain performance levels similar to that of workers. This approach will allow us to investigate color discrimination abilities of bees in different parts of the color space by increasing the color similarity between stimuli in differential conditioning under controlled conditions. Comparing the perceptual capabilities of different bee species using the PER paradigm may thus enable us to better understand the evolution of color processing within the family Apidae. Figure 1: Probability of proboscis extension response (PER) during absolute conditioning of three color stimuli. Bumblebee drones were trained to associate a color stimulus of particular wavelength (435nm, n=20; 488nm, n=21; and 528nm, n=17) with a sucrose reward. After two hours, a transfer test showed that drones can retrieve the learned color (conditioned stimulus; CS) and discriminate against a novel color (Ncol). Learning performance did not differ among colors. Figure 1 Keywords: Bumblebee, associative learning, proboscis extension response, monochromatic light, visual conditioning, Bombus terrestris, memory consolidation, Drones Conference: International Conference on Invertebrate Vision, Fjälkinge, Sweden, 1 Aug - 8 Aug, 2013. Presentation Type: Poster presentation preferred Topic: Colour and polarisation vision Citation: Lichtenstein L, Sommerlandt FM and Spaethe J (2019). Restoring the males’ honor: Pavlovian PER conditioning of visual cues in bumblebee drones. Front. Physiol. Conference Abstract: International Conference on Invertebrate Vision. doi: 10.3389/conf.fphys.2013.25.00107 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 28 Feb 2013; Published Online: 09 Dec 2019. * Correspondence: Mr. Frank M Sommerlandt, University of Würzburg, Department of Behavioral Physiology and Sociobiology, Würzburg, 97074, Germany, frank.sommerlandt@uni-wuerzburg.de Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Leonie Lichtenstein Frank M Sommerlandt Johannes Spaethe Google Leonie Lichtenstein Frank M Sommerlandt Johannes Spaethe Google Scholar Leonie Lichtenstein Frank M Sommerlandt Johannes Spaethe PubMed Leonie Lichtenstein Frank M Sommerlandt Johannes Spaethe Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Rats were shocked in a context on two occasions and then tested for fear reactions as indexed by freezing. Rats spent the interval between conditioning trials and between conditioning and test in their home cages. A short interval between context-conditioning trials or between trials involving a discrete conditioned stimulus (CS) produced better learning than longer intervals. A short retention interval between conditioning and test produced better performance than longer intervals. The effects of the intertrial interval on learning are the opposite of those reported previously and are opposite to those predicted by contemporary learning theories. The effects of the training to test interval on performance are predicted by Wagner's sometimes opponent process (SOP) theory (Wagner, 1981).

Classical conditioning of motor responses, such as the eyeblink response, is an experimental model of associative learning and of adaptive timing of movements. A conditioned blink will have its maximum amplitude near the expected onset of the unconditioned blink-eliciting stimulus and it adapts to changes in the interval between the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. Previous studies have shown that an eyeblink conditioning protocol can make cerebellar Purkinje cells learn to pause in response to the conditioned stimulus. According to the cerebellar cortical conditioning model, this conditioned Purkinje cell response drives the overt blink. If so, the model predicts that the temporal properties of the Purkinje cell response reflect the overt behaviour. To test this prediction, in vivo recordings of Purkinje cell activity were performed in decerebrate ferrets during conditioning, using direct stimulation of cerebellar mossy and climbing fibre afferents as conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. The results show that Purkinje cells not only develop a change in responsiveness to the conditioned stimulus. They also learn a particular temporal response profile where the timing, not only of onset and maximum but also of offset, is determined by the temporal interval between the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli.

The pharmacological effects of an immunosuppressive drug, such as cyclosporine A (CsA), can be learned and retrieved by humans and animals when applying associative learning paradigms. This principle is based on Pavlovian conditioning, in which repeated presentation of an "unconditioned stimulus" (US; here, the drug CsA) is paired with exposure to a "conditioned stimulus" (CS; here, the novel taste of saccharin). Re-exposure to the CS at a later time leads to an avoidance behavior. Concomitantly, using this paradigm, animals exposed to the CS (saccharin) display immunosuppression, reflected by reduced splenic T-cell proliferation and diminished interleukin-2 and interferon-γ expression and release in ex vivo cultured splenocytes, mimicking the pharmacological effects of the US (CsA). Notably, this paradigm of taste-immune associative learning demonstrates the impressive abilities of the brain to detect and store information about an organism's immunological status and to retrieve this information, thereby modulating immunological functions via endogenous pathways. Moreover, conditioned pharmacological effects, obtained by means of associative learning, have been successfully implemented as controlled drug-dose reduction strategies as a supportive treatment option to optimize pharmacological treatment effects for patients' benefit. However, our knowledge about the underlying neurobiological and immunological mechanisms mediating such learned immunomodulatory effects is still limited. A reliable animal model of taste-immune associative learning can provide novel insights into peripheral and central nervous processes. In this article, we describe protocols that focus on the basic taste-immune associative learning paradigm with CsA and saccharin in rats, where conditioned peripheral immunosuppression is determined in ex vivo cultured splenocytes. The behavioral protocol is reliable and adaptable and may pave the road for future studies using taste-immune associative learning paradigms to gain deeper insight into brain-to-immune-system communication. © 2022 The Authors. Current Protocols published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. Basic Protocol 1: Taste-immune associative learning with cyclosporine A Basic Protocol 2: Splenocyte isolation and cultivation to study stimulation-induced cytokine production.

Associative learning is the process whereby humans and other animals learn the predictive relationship between cues in their environment. This process underlies simple forms of learning from rewards, such as classical and operant conditioning. This chapter introduces the basics of associative learning and discusses the role that memory processes play in the establishment and maintenance of this learning. It then discusses the role that associative learning plays in human memory, including through paired associate learning, the enhancement of memory by reward, and the formation of episodic memories. Next, the chapter illustrates how the memory process influences choice in decision-making, where associative learning allows people to learn the values of different options. The chapter concludes with some suggestions about how models of associative learning, memory, and choice can be integrated into a single theoretical framework.

Blaser, Couvillon, and Bitterman (2006) presented data obtained with honeybees that in principle challenged all traditional interpretations of blocking. They administered A + followed by either A + or + alone (where + indicates an unconditioned stimulus) and then tested on X. They observed less responding to X when they administered A + than when + alone was administered, a phenomenon they called "pseudoblocking". Here we examined pseudoblocking in a rat fear-conditioning preparation. In Experiment 1, using a control procedure that was similar to our usual blocking control, we obtained conventional blocking but failed to observe pseudoblocking in our analogue to Blaser et al.'s procedure. In Experiment 2, we used Blaser et al.'s control procedure and again failed to observe the pseudoblocking effect with rats when we used the experimental context as an analogue to the honeybee feeder used by Blaser et al. After reviewing their protocol and previously published studies from their laboratory, we hypothesized that the feeder that they treated as a training context probably served as a punctate cue. We also tested this possibility in Experiment 2, using a punctate cue as a surrogate feeder, and were now able to reproduce their pseudoblocking phenomena. Our results are consistent with a simple overshadowing account of pseudoblocking, within the framework of existing theories of associative learning, which is not applicable to the conventional blocking paradigm. Thus, blocking remains a real phenomenon that must be addressed by models of associative learning.

In a previous study (Hugdahl & Brobeck, 1986) it was shown that Pavlovian conditioning to an auditory verbal conditioned stimulus (CS) initially presented only to the left cerebral hemisphere was stronger than when the same CS was presented to the right hemisphere. This was followed up in the present study by controlling for the possibility that the effect was caused by laterally biased attention. The study was performed using the "dichotic extinction paradigm," which consists of three different phases. During the habituation phase, the CS+ and CS- were presented binaurally and separated in time. During the acquisition phase, the CS+ was followed by a white-noise unconditioned stimulus (UCS). During the dichotic extinction phase, the CS+ and CS- were presented dichotically, i.e., simultaneous presentations on each trial. Half of the subjects had the CS+ in the right ear, and half had the CS+ in the left ear. Each group was further divided into two subgroups, with one subgroup instructed to attend only to the right ear input, and the other subgroup to attend only to the left ear input. During acquisition, larger electrodermal responses were obtained to the CS+ than to the CS-. During dichotic extinction, the CS+ right ear group showed superior resistance to extinction compared to the CS+ left ear group, with no effect of the manipulation of attention. The effect was, however, attenuated when levels of acquisition was used as covariates in an analysis of covariance. There were overall larger responses from the left hand recording.

Several recent studies have investigated relationships between post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and learning and memory problems. These reports have found in general that not only does PTSD affect trauma-related memories, but when patients with PTSD are compared with similar trauma patients without PTSD, general memory impairments have been found. The present paper reports a study in which associative learning, using Pavlovian eyeblink conditioning, was investigated in combat veterans with and without chronic PTSD, using interstimulus intervals of 500 and 1000 msec in two separate experiments. Although several recent reports suggest that larger-magnitude autonomic conditioned responses occur in patients with PTSD during Pavlovian conditioning, the present study found evidence of impaired Pavlovian eyeblink conditioning in combat veterans with and without PTSD, compared to non-combat veterans. Although these data suggest that combat leads to an impaired associative learning process regardless of whether PTSD is apparent, a group of community-dwelling combat veterans not under medical treatment showed normal conditioning, suggesting that variables other than prior combat must also be involved.

Conditioned lick suppression by water-deprived rats was used to elaborate on recent evidence that the attenuated conditioned response elicited by an overshadowed stimulus may be enhanced by extinction of the overshadowing stimulus with which it had been trained in simultaneous compound. Using a modified serial stimulus arrangement in which a light coexisted with the last half of a tone that terminated with footshock, it was found in Experiment 1 that the tone overshadowed the light. Extinction of the tone-shock association resulted in a virtually complete recovery of the response to the overshadowed light. Using this serial overshadowing procedure, the possibility that the strength of a conditioned response to an element trained in compound covaries as a function of the strength of the response to the other element was tested in Experiment 2. Following overshadowing training similar to that of Experiment 1, independent reinforcement of the overshadowed light, that is, associative inflation, was found to have no deleterious effect on the response to the overshadowing tone. This suggests that the effects of postconditioning extinction and inflation of one element do not have symmetrical effects upon responding to the other element. The results of Experiment 2 were replicated in Experiment 3 using a simultaneous compound stimulus as opposed to the serial compound of the previous studies. These results are discussed in terms of various associative and cognitive models of learning and performance.

Interval Timing in Aversive Conditioning: Neural Correlates in Amygdala and Related Networks in Rats

Prior research has demonstrated renewal, which is the ability of contextual cues to modulate excitatory responding to a Pavlovian conditioned stimulus (CS). In the present research, conditioned lick suppression in rats was used to examine similar contextual modulation of Pavlovian conditioned inhibition. After Pavlovian conditioned inhibition training with a CS in one context, subjects were exposed to pairings of the CS with an unconditioned stimulus (US) either in the same or in a second context. Results indicated that, when the CS was paired with the US in the second context, the CS retained its inhibitory control over behavior, provided that testing occurred in the context used for inhibition training. However, when the CS-US pairings occurred in the inhibition training context, the CS subsequently proved to be excitatory regardless of where testing occurred. These observations indicate that conditioned inhibition is subject to renewal.

Conceiving the construct ‘social-emotional learning climate’ as an embodiment of Illeris’ contemporary learning theory, this paper serves dual purposes. First, it examines recent music education literature, which identifies issues of competence and institutionalised pedagogic practice in secondary school music settings that result in adolescents’ inability to target and develop personal locus of control over learning, and the subsequent rejection of the learning environment. Second, it details findings, discussion and pedagogic implications from the author's dissertation study exploring music teacher formative influence upon and student experience of Illeris’ theory of learning process within three Canadian secondary school learning settings integrating informal learning practices.

Fear learning allows us to identify and anticipate aversive events and adapt our behavior accordingly. This is often thought to rely on associative learning mechanisms where an initially neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) is repeatedly paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US), eventually leading to the CS also being perceived as aversive and threatening. Importantly, however, humans also show verbal fear learning. Namely, they have the ability to change their responses to stimuli rapidly through verbal instructions about CS-US pairings. Past research on the link between experience-based and verbal fear learning indicated that verbal instructions about a reversal of CS-US pairings can fully override the effects of previously experienced CS-US pairings, as measured through fear ratings, skin conductance, and fear-potentiated startle. However, it remains an open question whether such instructions can also annul learned CS representations in the brain. Here, we used a fear reversal paradigm (female and male participants) in conjunction with representational similarity analysis of fMRI data to test whether verbal instructions fully override the effects of experienced CS-US pairings in fear-related brain regions or not. Previous research suggests that only the right amygdala should show lingering representations of previously experienced threat ("pavlovian trace"). Unexpectedly, we found evidence for the residual effect of prior CS-US experience to be much more widespread than anticipated, in the amygdala but also cortical regions like the dorsal anterior cingulate or dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This finding shines a new light on the interaction of different fear learning mechanisms, at times with unexpected consequences.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Humans are able to learn about aversive stimuli both from experience (i.e., repeated pairings of conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US; pavlovian conditioning), and from verbal instructions about stimulus pairings. Understanding how experience-based and verbal learning processes interact is key for understanding the cognitive and neural underpinnings of fear learning. We tested whether prior aversive experiences (CS-US pairings) affected subsequent verbal learning, searching for lingering threat signals after verbal instructions reversed a CS from being threatening to being safe. While past research suggested such threat signals can only be found in the amygdala, we found evidence to be much more widespread, including the medial and lateral PFC. This highlights how experience-based and verbal learning processes interact to support adaptive behavior.