Neural and Psychological Analysis of Behavioral Reinforcement Processes

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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.