Neural and Psychological Analysis of Behavioral Reinforcement Processes

人类和动物的行为都受到个体喜欢和不喜欢的事件的影响。最明显的是，人类（和动物）学会做他们喜欢的事情，避免他们不喜欢的事情。我们一直在老鼠身上研究这个过程。由于我们显然不能问老鼠它们喜欢什么不喜欢什么，我们一直在试验从它们的超声波叫声中获得这些信息，这种叫声的频率是人类听不到的。高频率和低频率的发声分别与奖励和厌恶事件有关。我们的实验表明，老鼠可以通过几种不同的方式来学习预测这些事件，每一种方式都由大脑的不同部分控制。在其他实验中，我们正在研究奖励和厌恶事件对记忆的无意识强化效应。在一项研究中，我们正在研究这些事件如何促进记忆存储从短期到长期的转移；在另一项研究中，我们正在研究这些事件对无意识习惯行为的强化效应背后的大脑机制。所有这些研究都有助于我们理解大脑如何控制老鼠和人类的行为。

Both human and animal behavior is influenced by events that individuals like and by events they don't like. Most obviously, people (and animals) learn to do things that gets what they like and avoids what they don't like. We have been studying this process in rats. Since we obviously cannot ask rats what they like and don't like, we have been experimenting with getting this information from their ultrasonic calls which are at frequencies that cannot he heard by humans. Higher and lower frequency vocalizations are associated with rewarding and aversive events, respectively. Our experiments show that rats can learn to anticipate such events in several different ways, each one controlled by a different part of the brain. In other experiments we are studying the unconscious strengthening effect that rewarding and aversive events have on memory. In one study we are examining how these events promote the transfer of memory storage from short- to long-term memory; in another study we are studying the brain mechanisms underlying the strengthening effect of these events on unconscious habitual behaviors. All of these studies contribute to our understanding of how the brain controls behavior in both rats and humans.