title: Effects of ventral striatal lesions on first- and second-order appetitive conditioning.
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.
authors.affiliation: National Institute on Drug Abuse Intramural Research Program, Baltimore, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Michael A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: McDannald
authors.forename: Barry
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Setlow
authors.forename: Peter C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Holland
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001070:Appetitive Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D009714:Nucleus Accumbens / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D020318:Rats, Long-Evans
keywords: conditioned reinforcement; incentive learning; nucleus accumbens; rat