title: Visuocortical changes during delay and trace aversive conditioning: evidence from steady-state visual evoked potentials.
abstract: The visual system is biased toward sensory cues that have been associated with danger or harm through temporal co-occurrence. An outstanding question about conditioning-induced changes in visuocortical processing is the extent to which they are driven primarily by top-down factors such as expectancy or by low-level factors such as the temporal proximity between conditioned stimuli and aversive outcomes. Here, the authors examined this question using 2 different differential aversive conditioning experiments: participants learned to associate a particular grating stimulus with an aversive noise that was presented either in close temporal proximity (delay conditioning experiment) or after a prolonged stimulus-free interval (trace conditioning experiment). In both experiments, the authors probed cue-related cortical responses by recording steady-state visual evoked potentials. Although behavioral ratings indicated that all participants successfully learned to discriminate between the grating patterns that predicted the presence versus absence of the aversive noise, selective amplification of population-level responses in visual cortex for the conditioned danger signal was observed only when the grating and the noise were temporally contiguous. Our findings are in line with notions purporting that changes in the electrocortical response of visual neurons induced by aversive conditioning are a product of Hebbian associations among sensory cell assemblies rather than being driven entirely by expectancy-based, declarative processes.
authors: Center for the Study of Emotion & Attention, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA. vmiskovic@ufl.edu
authors: Vladimir
authors: V
authors: Miskovic
authors: Andreas
authors: A
authors: Keil
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013997:Time Factors; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
references: PLoS One. 2009 Jun 10;4(6):e5865
references: 19517024
references: Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol. 1991 May;78(5):378-88
references: 1711456
references: Med Eng Phys. 2008 Oct;30(8):1079-88
references: 18316226
references: Psychophysiology. 2006 Mar;43(2):216-26
references: 16712592
references: Neuroimage. 2007 Jun;36(2):472-9
references: 17451974
references: Cereb Cortex. 2006 Jun;16(6):876-87
references: 16151178
references: Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol. 1995 Jan;96(1):24-35
references: 7530186
references: J Neurosci. 2008 Jun 11;28(24):6202-10
references: 18550762
references: Neuroimage. 2006 Aug 15;32(2):778-89
references: 16784875
references: Psychophysiology. 2000 Jul;37(4):523-32
references: 10934911
references: Neuron. 2002 Aug 1;35(3):567-74
references: 12165477
references: Learn Mem. 2007 Jan 03;14(1-2):1-16
references: 17202426
references: J Cogn Neurosci. 2012 Jan;24(1):17-27
references: 21671742
references: J Neurosci. 2004 Jan 7;24(1):218-28
references: 14715954
references: Hum Brain Mapp. 2007 Apr;28(4):323-34
references: 16779799
references: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 Aug 3;107(31):13878-82
references: 20643918
references: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Jul 26;108(30):12545-50
references: 21746922
references: Cereb Cortex. 2007 Aug;17(8):1867-76
references: 17053046
references: Nat Rev Neurosci. 2008 Feb;9(2):148-58
references: 18209732
references: Comput Intell Neurosci. 2011;2011:861705
references: 21577273
references: J Neurosci. 2011 May 25;31(21):7801-10
references: 21613493
references: Brain Res Cogn Brain Res. 2005 Oct;25(2):459-71
references: 16140512
references: Cereb Cortex. 2009 Dec;19(12):2803-9
references: 19304914
references: Neuropsychologia. 2007 Apr 8;45(7):1393-9
references: 17161441
references: Int J Psychophysiol. 2010 Oct;78(1):14-9
references: 20153785
references: Nat Neurosci. 1998 Nov;1(7):631-4
references: 10196572
references: Annu Rev Psychol. 2001;52:111-39
references: 11148301
references: Trends Cogn Sci. 2005 Dec;9(12):585-94
references: 16289871
references: Proc Biol Sci. 1998 Apr 22;265(1397):649-57
references: 9608726
references: Spat Vis. 1997;10(4):437-42
references: 9176953
references: Curr Biol. 2011 Aug 9;21(15):R579-81
references: 21820619
references: Ann Neurosci. 2010 Jul;17(3):136-41
references: 25205891
references: Spat Vis. 1997;10(4):433-6
references: 9176952
references: Hum Brain Mapp. 2009 Feb;30(2):532-40
references: 18095279
references: Pavlov J Biol Sci. 1985 Oct-Dec;20(4):163-70
references: 4069791
references: Brain Topogr. 1997 Spring;9(3):163-8
references: 9104827
references: Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2003 Sep;3(3):195-206
references: 14672156
references: Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2007 May 29;362(1481):837-55
references: 17395574
references: Psychophysiology. 2012 Sep;49(9):1230-41
references: 22891639