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      Partial Predictability in Avoidance Acquisition and Expression of Wistar-Kyoto and Sprague-Dawley Rats: Implications for Anxiety Vulnerability in Uncertain Situations

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          Abstract

          Individual differences or vulnerabilities must exist which bias some individuals toward psychopathology while others remain resilient in the face of trauma. Recent work has studied the effects of uncertainty on individuals expressing behavioral inhibition (BI). The current study extended this work with uncertainty to Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rats which are a behaviorally inhibited inbred strain that models learning vulnerabilities for anxiety disorders and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). WKY rats exhibit superior avoidance performance in a signaled bar press avoidance task in which a tone conditioned stimulus (CS) signals a foot shock unconditional stimulus (US) when compared with non-inhibited Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats. In addition, WKY rats express enhanced eyeblink conditioning. Recent work with behaviorally inhibited humans has indicated that this enhanced eyeblink conditioning is more evident in conditions that insert CS- or US-alone trials into CS-US paired training, resulting in uncertain and suboptimal learning conditions. The current study examined the effects of partial predictability training, in which the CS signaled the US only one-half of the time, on the acquisition and expression of avoidance. Standard training with a fixed 60-s CS which predicted shock on 100% of trials was compared with training in which the CS predicted shock on 50% of trials (partial predictability) using a pseudorandom schedule. As expected, WKY rats acquired avoidance responses faster and to a greater degree than SD rats. Partial predictability of the US essentially reduced SD rats to escape responding. Partial predictability also reduced avoidance in WKY rats; however, adjusting avoidance rates for the number of potential pairings of the CS and US early in training suggested a similar degree of avoidance expression late in the last session of training. Enhanced active avoidance expression, even in uncertain learning conditions, can be interpreted as behaviorally inhibited WKY rats responding to the expectancy of the shock by avoiding, whereas non-inhibited SD rats were responding to the presence of the shock by escaping. Future work should explore how WKY and SD rats as well as behaviorally inhibited humans acquire and extinguish avoidance responses in uncertain learning situations.

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          Most cited references70

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          Species-specific defense reactions and avoidance learning.

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            Neural structures mediating expression and extinction of platform-mediated avoidance.

            Individuals use both passive and active defensive responses to environmental threats. Much is known about the neural circuits of passive defensive responses (e.g., freezing), but less is known about the substrates of active defensive responses (e.g., avoidance). We developed an active avoidance task in which rats learn to avoid a tone-signaled footshock by stepping onto a nearby platform. An advantage of this task is that freezing, which can interfere with avoidance, is reduced, thereby facilitating comparison of the effects of manipulations on avoidance versus freezing. After 10 d of avoidance training, rats were infused with muscimol to pharmacologically inactivate the prelimbic cortex (PL), infralimbic cortex (IL), ventral striatum (VS), or basolateral amygdala (BLA). Inactivating PL, VS, or BLA all impaired avoidance expression, but these areas differed with respect to freezing. Inactivating BLA decreased freezing consistent with loss of the tone-shock association, whereas inactivation of VS increased freezing consistent with loss of avoidance memory. Inactivation of PL had no effect on freezing. Inactivation of IL did not impair avoidance expression but did impair avoidance extinction. Our findings suggest that active avoidance is mediated by prefrontal-striatal circuits, which may be overactive in individuals suffering from trauma-related disorders. Copyright © 2014 the authors 0270-6474/14/349736-07$15.00/0.
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              Stable behavioral inhibition and its association with anxiety disorder.

              "Behavioral inhibition to the unfamiliar" is a temperamental construct reflecting the tendency to be shy, timid, and constrained in novel situations. Previous work has suggested that it may be associated with anxiety disorders in children. Psychopathology was assessed in children from a nonclinical sample originally identified as behaviorally inhibited or uninhibited at 21 months and followed through 7 1/2 years. Children who remained inhibited at 4, 5 1/2 and 7 1/2 years (Stable Inhibited) had higher rates of anxiety disorders than children who were not consistently inhibited. Their parents had higher rates of multiple childhood anxiety disorders and of continuing anxiety disorder. These results suggest that the association between behavioral inhibition and anxiety disorder is accounted for by children who have stable behavioral inhibition.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                URI : https://loop.frontiersin.org/people/158571
                URI : https://loop.frontiersin.org/people/126917
                URI : https://loop.frontiersin.org/people/2645
                Journal
                Front Psychiatry
                Front Psychiatry
                Front. Psychiatry
                Frontiers in Psychiatry
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                1664-0640
                19 August 2020
                2020
                : 11
                : 848
                Affiliations
                [1] 1 Neuroscience Department, Carthage College , Kenosha, WI, United States
                [2] 2 Department of Psychiatry, Stress and Motivated Behavior Institute, Upstate Medical University , Syracuse, NY, United States
                [3] 3 School of Psychological Sciences, University of Northern Colorado , Greeley, CO, United States
                [4] 4 Department of Veterans Affairs, Syracuse Veterans Affairs Medical Center , Syracuse, NY, United States
                Author notes

                Edited by: Cynthia H. Y. Fu, University of East London, United Kingdom

                Reviewed by: Shanaz Tejani-Butt, University of the Sciences, United States; Dervla O’Malley, University College Cork, Ireland

                *Correspondence: Daniel Paul Miller, dmiller@ 123456carthage.edu

                This article was submitted to Mood and Anxiety Disorders, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry

                Article
                10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00848
                7466649
                bb161de8-30bf-4300-b1a1-dc61b1871285
                Copyright © 2020 Miller, Allen and Servatius

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                : 10 June 2020
                : 04 August 2020
                Page count
                Figures: 4, Tables: 0, Equations: 0, References: 77, Pages: 11, Words: 7242
                Categories
                Psychiatry
                Original Research

                Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry
                avoidance,behavioral inhibition,expectancy,partial reinforcement,wistar-kyoto (wky) rat

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