67
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Effects of lesions of the nucleus accumbens core on choice between small certain rewards and large uncertain rewards in rats

      research-article
      1 , , 1
      BMC Neuroscience
      BioMed Central

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Background

          Animals must frequently make choices between alternative courses of action, seeking to maximize the benefit obtained. They must therefore evaluate the magnitude and the likelihood of the available outcomes. Little is known of the neural basis of this process, or what might predispose individuals to be overly conservative or to take risks excessively (avoiding or preferring uncertainty, respectively). The nucleus accumbens core (AcbC) is known to contribute to rats' ability to choose large, delayed rewards over small, immediate rewards; AcbC lesions cause impulsive choice and an impairment in learning with delayed reinforcement. However, it is not known how the AcbC contributes to choice involving probabilistic reinforcement, such as between a large, uncertain reward and a small, certain reward. We examined the effects of excitotoxic lesions of the AcbC on probabilistic choice in rats.

          Results

          Rats chose between a single food pellet delivered with certainty ( p = 1) and four food pellets delivered with varying degrees of uncertainty ( p = 1, 0.5, 0.25, 0.125, and 0.0625) in a discrete-trial task, with the large-reinforcer probability decreasing or increasing across the session. Subjects were trained on this task and then received excitotoxic or sham lesions of the AcbC before being retested. After a transient period during which AcbC-lesioned rats exhibited relative indifference between the two alternatives compared to controls, AcbC-lesioned rats came to exhibit risk-averse choice, choosing the large reinforcer less often than controls when it was uncertain, to the extent that they obtained less food as a result. Rats behaved as if indifferent between a single certain pellet and four pellets at p = 0.32 (sham-operated) or at p = 0.70 (AcbC-lesioned) by the end of testing. When the probabilities did not vary across the session, AcbC-lesioned rats and controls strongly preferred the large reinforcer when it was certain, and strongly preferred the small reinforcer when the large reinforcer was very unlikely ( p = 0.0625), with no differences between AcbC-lesioned and sham-operated groups.

          Conclusion

          These results support the view that the AcbC contributes to action selection by promoting the choice of uncertain, as well as delayed, reinforcement.

          Related collections

          Most cited references142

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Deciding advantageously before knowing the advantageous strategy.

          Deciding advantageously in a complex situation is thought to require overt reasoning on declarative knowledge, namely, on facts pertaining to premises, options for action, and outcomes of actions that embody the pertinent previous experience. An alternative possibility was investigated: that overt reasoning is preceded by a nonconscious biasing step that uses neural systems other than those that support declarative knowledge. Normal participants and patients with prefrontal damage and decision-making defects performed a gambling task in which behavioral, psychophysiological, and self-account measures were obtained in parallel. Normals began to choose advantageously before they realized which strategy worked best, whereas prefrontal patients continued to choose disadvantageously even after they knew the correct strategy. Moreover, normals began to generate anticipatory skin conductance responses (SCRs) whenever they pondered a choice that turned out to be risky, before they knew explicitly that it was a risky choice, whereas patients never developed anticipatory SCRs, although some eventually realized which choices were risky. The results suggest that, in normal individuals, nonconscious biases guide behavior before conscious knowledge does. Without the help of such biases, overt knowledge may be insufficient to ensure advantageous behavior.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            Varieties of impulsivity.

            J Evenden (1999)
            The concept of impulsivity covers a wide range of "actions that are poorly conceived, prematurely expressed, unduly risky, or inappropriate to the situation and that often result in undesirable outcomes". As such it plays an important role in normal behaviour, as well as, in a pathological form, in many kinds of mental illness such as mania, personality disorders, substance abuse disorders and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Although evidence from psychological studies of human personality suggests that impulsivity may be made up of several independent factors, this has not made a major impact on biological studies of impulsivity. This may be because there is little unanimity as to which these factors are. The present review summarises evidence for varieties of impulsivity from several different areas of research: human psychology, psychiatry and animal behaviour. Recently, a series of psychopharmacological studies has been carried out by the present author and colleagues using methods proposed to measure selectively different aspects of impulsivity. The results of these studies suggest that several neurochemical mechanisms can influence impulsivity, and that impulsive behaviour has no unique neurobiological basis. Consideration of impulsivity as the result of several different, independent factors which interact to modulate behaviour may provide better insight into the pathology than current hypotheses based on serotonergic underactivity.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              A discounting framework for choice with delayed and probabilistic rewards.

              When choosing between delayed or uncertain outcomes, individuals discount the value of such outcomes on the basis of the expected time to or the likelihood of their occurrence. In an integrative review of the expanding experimental literature on discounting, the authors show that although the same form of hyperbola-like function describes discounting of both delayed and probabilistic outcomes, a variety of recent findings are inconsistent with a single-process account. The authors also review studies that compare discounting in different populations and discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings. The present effort illustrates the value of studying choice involving both delayed and probabilistic outcomes within a general discounting framework that uses similar experimental procedures and a common analytical approach. ((c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                BMC Neurosci
                BMC Neuroscience
                BioMed Central (London )
                1471-2202
                2005
                28 May 2005
                : 6
                : 37
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EB, UK
                Article
                1471-2202-6-37
                10.1186/1471-2202-6-37
                1177958
                15921529
                845a67f8-9084-4975-9dac-c9c42d82da5c
                Copyright © 2005 Cardinal and Howes; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 18 April 2005
                : 28 May 2005
                Categories
                Research Article

                Neurosciences
                Neurosciences

                Comments

                Comment on this article