Extinction and Recovery in Associative Learning

描述(由申请者提供)：这个项目涉及到理解灭绝，即当巴甫洛夫信号或乐器动作在没有增强器的情况下反复出现时发生的学习表现的损失。灭绝是一种自然发生的行为变化过程，也是临床治疗中用来消除人类不想要的想法、情绪和行为的工具。尽管人们很容易认为灭绝会抹去原始的学习，但消失的表现很容易恢复，而且几种恢复效应(例如，更新、恢复、快速再获得、自发恢复和复苏)表明，原始学习可能基本完好无损。此外，由于这些效应可以被解释为改变背景或“背景”的影响，它们表明，灭绝是由新的抑制性学习造成的，这种学习对学习的背景特别敏感。这个项目的目标是寻求对灭绝的综合理解，因为它在这些和其他反应-恢复过程中揭示出来。它将特别关注工具性(操作性)学习的灭绝，因为操作性学习的原则对于理解一系列行为问题--如吸烟、药物滥用、饮食和暴饮暴食--至关重要，在这些问题中，自愿接触强化了至关重要的作用。实验将以大鼠为实验对象。其中一组将测试减少“更新效应”和“复活”的新方法。在“更新效应”和“复活效应”中，当被消灭的行为本身被消灭时，被消灭的行为会复发。另一组将研究抑制“快速再习得”的方法(即当动作强化配对被重新引入时，已熄灭的动作迅速螺旋式上升为复发)，并测试饥饿作为影响复发的背景刺激的效果。第三组将分析应用D-环丝氨酸(一种被认为在学习中发挥作用的大脑受体的部分激动剂)的灭绝增强效果，以及关于如何在新环境下增强灭绝泛化的新假设。第四组将分析受试者必须购买(或获得)增强剂后才能食用(或服用)的行为序列或行为链的消失。这些结果将加深我们对灭绝这一基本的行为和临床现象的理解，并开发新的方法来帮助促进灭绝学习，从而将失误和复发降至最低。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project is concerned with understanding extinction, the loss of learned performance that occurs when a Pavlovian signal or an instrumental action is repeatedly presented without its reinforcer. Extinction is a naturally-occurring process of behavior change, as well as a tool used in clinical treatments designed to eliminate unwanted thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in humans. Although it is tempting to assume that extinction erases the original learning, extinguished performance readily recovers, and several recovery effects (e.g., renewal, reinstatement, rapid reacquisition, spontaneous recovery, and resurgence) indicate that the original learning may be largely intact. In addition, because these effects can be interpreted as effects of changing the background or "context," they suggest that extinction results from new inhibitory learning that is especially sensitive to the context in which it is learned. The goal of this project is to seek an integrated understanding of extinction as it is revealed in these and other response-recovery processes. It will focus especially on the extinction of instrumental (operant) learning, because principles of operant learning are crucial for understanding a range of behavior problems-such as smoking, drug abuse, and eating and overeating-in which voluntary contact with reinforces plays an essential role. The experiments will involve rats as subjects. One set will test new methods for reducing the "renewal effect" (in which extinguished behavior relapses when the context is changed after extinction) and "resurgence" (in which a behavior has been extinguished and replaced by a second behavior relapses when the replacement behavior is itself extinguished). Another set will examine ways to inhibit "rapid reacquisition" (in which an extinguished action rapidly spirals into relapse when action-reinforcer pairings are reintroduced) and test the effects of hunger as a contextual stimulus influencing relapse. A third set will analyze the extinction-enhancing effects of administering D-cycloserine (a partial agonist of a brain receptor that is thought to play a role in learning), as well as new hypotheses about how to enhance the generalization of extinction to new contexts. A fourth set will analyze the extinction of sequences or "chains" of behavior in which the subject must purchase (or procure) access to the reinforcer before she can consume (or "take") it. The results will increase our understanding of extinction, a fundamental behavioral and clinical phenomenon, and develop new ways to help promote extinction learning so as to minimize lapse and relapse.