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Behavioral effects of acute p-xylene inhalation in rats: autoshaping, motor activity, and reversal learning.

p-Xylene is a ubiquitous solvent and chemical precursor used in industry, gasoline, and household products. While the population at risk for exposure is thus quite large, little is known about its neurobehavioral effects. To evaluate the possibility that p-xylene affects cognitive behavior, male Long-Evans hooded rats inhaled p-xylene at concentrations of 0 or 1600 ppm, 4 hr per day for 1 to 5 days, and were evaluated after exposure on two learning tasks and a test of motor activity. Autoshaping was carried out across 5 successive days with p-xylene exposure in the morning followed by testing in the afternoon. For this test, the retraction of a single response lever on a variable-time 35-sec schedule was followed by delivery of a food pellet. When the force required to depress the lever was low (0.10 N), response acquisition was faster in animals having inhaled 1600 ppm p-xylene than in air-exposed controls. When the force was increased to 0.20 N, however, p-xylene-exposed rats acquired the response no faster than controls. In contrast, inhaled p-xylene at 1600 ppm suppressed response rates in an automaintained reversal learning paradigm without affecting reversal rate. Studies of motor activity showed that while vertically-directed activity was unaffected by p-xylene, horizontally-directed activity was increased by about 30% for the first 15 min of each daily 25-min test.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Administration, Inhalation↗

Persistence training: a partial reinforcement procedure for reversing learned helplessness and depression.

This article examines the relative merits of either partial or continuous (total) success therapy as a device for reversing learned helplessness and depression in humans. College students experienced (a) no treatment followed by either abbreviated (20 trials) or extended (40 trials) continuous success therapy, (b) soluble problems followed by either abbreviated or extended continuous success therapy, (c) insoluble problems followed by either abbreviated or extended continuous success therapy, or (d) insoluble problems followed be either abbreviated or extended partial success therapy. Subsequently, subjects in all eight groups received 40 escape-extinction trials in which aversive tones were not controllable. The results of this experiment indicated that both continuous and partial success schedules were effective in reversing depressed responding (helplessness) induced by prior exposure to insoluble problems. However, only the partial success therapy schedules produced persistent escape responding in extinction. Also, across therapy procedures, extended therapy generated more response persistence in escape extinction than did abbreviated therapy. Theoretical implications of these results are discussed, and a compatible new treatment program, labeled persistence training, is introduced.

Adolescent↗

Successive visual reversal learning in rats as a function of amount of training per reversal and reduced spatial cues.

An experiment is reported which examined the effects of varying amounts of training per reversal over successive brightness discrimination reversals in rats, in a situation which reduced visual cues to spatial position. The results were similar to those of studies showing that amount of training affects successive reversal improvement on spatial problems but no differences were observed as a result of varying the cues for spatial position. The latter finding failed to confirm the result of a recent experiment in which a learning criterion was employed rather than a fixed-trials procedure.

Animals↗

Color reversal-learning deficits after tectofugal pathway lesions in the pigeon telencephalon.

Pigeons were post-operatively trained to discriminate two colors presented simultaneously. After reaching criterion on this task, they were required to perform a series of reversals of the color discrimination in which the positive and negative consequences of the stimuli were interchanged. Lesions of ectostriatum (the telencephalic target of the avian tectofugal visual pathway) impaired the ability of pigeons to learn a color-reversal task. An examination of the pattern of sparing and loss of performance on this task after lesions of various components of the ascending visual pathways suggests that deficits in color-reversal learning observed after lesions of the visual Wulst are not due to the Wulst's connections with the thalamofugal pathway. Instead, the data suggest that the visual Wulst maintains a role in color-reversal learning through its connections with the tectofugal pathway.

Animals↗

Effects of error and errorless discrimination acquisition on reversal learning.

The effectiveness of trial-and-error, graded-choice, and verbal-instruction procedures on the acquisition and maintenance of a two-choice simultaneous color discrimination in an intradimensional double-reversal learning situation was studied using 18 first-grade children. After acquiring a red-green discrimination during one 70-trial session, the discriminative roles of the stimuli were reversed for 30 trials, followed by a second reversal for 30 trials. Children in the graded-choice and verbal-instruction groups acquired and maintained the discriminations with fewer errors than children who learned by trial and error. The importance of the results in terms of two-stage discrimination learning theories is pointed out and similarities between errorless learning and overtraining are discussed.

Journal Article↗

Reverse learning and the physiological basis of eye movement desensitization.

Eye movement desensitization is a new and effective procedure for post-traumatic stress disorder that requires explanation. Reverse learning is a model developed in artificial neural networks as a theoretical explanation of rapid-eye-movement sleep. It demonstrates that an overloaded node within a network can be consolidated with a series of non-specific activations. Rapid-eye-movement sleep is suspected to have a memory consolidation function. Ponto-geniculo-occipital spikes, which occur in rapid-eye-movement sleep, are a candidate for such activations in the real brain. In cats, the phasic functions of rapid-eye-movement sleep are driven by ponto-geniculo-occipital spikes, which are non-specific, at highest amplitude in the visual system but present in other parts of the cortex. Such spikes can be evoked by sensory events such as eye movements. There is evidence of similar events in the human brain. Induced eye movements could generate ponto-geniculo-occipital equivalent spikes and eye movement desensitization/reprocessing could be explained as a focused and artificial exploitation of the rapid-eye-movement sleep mechanism. This theory of eye movement desensitization/reprocessing enables some explanation of current results and may be relevant to other problems, such as stereotyped behaviour.

Animals↗

The influence of NMDA receptors in the dorsomedial striatum on response reversal learning.

In mammals, the dorsomedial striatum is one brain area shown to be critical for the flexible shifting of response patterns. At present, the neurochemical mechanisms that underlie learning during a shift in response patterns are unknown. The present study examined the effects of NMDA competitive antagonist, DL-2-amino-5-phosphonopentanoic acid (AP-5), injected into the dorsomedial striatum on the acquisition and reversal of a response discrimination. Male Long-Evans rats were tested across two consecutive days in a modified cross-maze. Rats received an infusion of either saline or AP-5 (5 or 25 nmol) 5 min prior to each test session. In the acquisition phase rats learned to turn in one direction (right or left) to receive a cereal reinforcement. In the reversal learning phase rats learned to turn in the opposite direction as in the acquisition phase. In both phases, criterion was achieved when a rat made 10 consecutive correct trials. Infusions of AP-5 did not impair acquisition, but impaired reversal learning of a response discrimination in a dose-dependent fashion. The reversal learning deficit induced by AP-5 resulted from reversions back to the originally learned response pattern following the initial shift. These results suggest that activation of NMDA receptors in the dorsomedial striatum are critical for the flexible shifting of response patterns by enhancing the reliable execution of a new response pattern under changing task contingencies.

2-Amino-5-phosphonovalerate↗