Mark E Bouton
University Of Vermont & St Agric College
Project start date: 2001-12-01
Project end date: 2017-04-30
Sponsored Links Excellgen http://Excellgen.com
Grants awarded to Mark E Bouton
EXTINCTION AND RECOVERY IN ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING
Mark E Bouton
University Of Vermont & St Agric College, 85 South Prospect Street, Burlington, Vt 05405
Grant 5R01MH064847-08 from National Institute Of Mental Health
Abstract: 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 fundamental phenomenon of .behavior, and it provides a crucial tool used in clinical treatments designed to eliminate unwanted thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in humans. Although it is tempting to assume that extinction destroys the original learning, extinguished performance readily recovers, and several recovery effects (e.g., renewal, reinstatement, rapid reacquisition, and spontaneous recovery) 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. Several sets of experiments with rat subjects will analyze how extinction and other forms of learning are influenced by the passage of time (a change in the "temporal context"). They will also examine ways to reduce spontaneous recovery and test a new hypothesis explaining why practice that is distributed in time may produce better learning than practice that is massed in time. Another set of experiments will analyze a different set of extinction and recovery effects (secondary extinction, concurrent recovery, and resurgence) with the goal of incorporating them in a unified account of extinction. A third set of experiments will study the effects of several drugs (d-cycloserine, yohimbine, and AM404) that are thought to have potential for facilitating extinction learning. Although such drugs hold promise as adjuncts to extinction therapy, their effects on extinction and especially the various recovery (relapse) processes under investigation here are essentially unknown at present. The results will increase our understanding of extinction, a fundamental behavioral and clinical phenomenon, and will suggest ways to help promote extinction learning so as to minimize lapse and relapse
Keywords: AM-404; AM404; Accounting; Animals; Associative Learning; Behavior; Behavioral; Cell Communication and Signaling; Cell Signaling; Clinical; Clinical Treatment; Common Rat Strains; Conditioning, Classical; Conditionings, Classical; Cycloserine; Dependence; Drugs; Emotions; Extinction; Extinction (Psychology); Goals; Human; Human, General; Intracellular Communication and Signaling; Investigation; Learning; Mammals, Rats; Man (Taxonomy); Man, Modern; Medication; Pavlovian conditioning; Performance; Pharmaceutic Preparations; Pharmaceutical Preparations; Process; R-4-Amino-3-isoxazolidi; Rat; Rattus; Recovery; Relapse; Signal Transduction; Signal Transduction Systems; Signaling; Stimulus; Testing; Thinking; Thinking, function; Time; Yohimban-16-carboxylic acid, 17-hydroxy-, methyl ester, (16alpha, 17alpha)-; Yohimbine; behavioral extinction; biological signal transduction; classical conditioning; cognitive behavior therapy; corynine; drug/agent; experiment; experimental research; experimental study; interest; intervention design; learning extinction; prevent; preventing; quebrachine; reinforcer; research study; response; therapy design; tool; treatment design; trial regimen; trial treatment
Project start date: 2001-12-01
Project end date: 2012-04-30
Budget start date: 1-MAY-2009
Budget end date: 30-APR-2010
5R01MH064847-08 (2009): $263340
2R01MH064847-06A1 (2007): $258947
Temporal And Associative Aspects Of Pavlovian Learning
Mark E Bouton, Professor
University Of Vermont And St Agric College 85 South Prospect Street Burlington, Vt 05405
Grant 5R01MH064847-05 from National Institute Of Mental Health IRG: ZRG1
Abstract: The general goal of this project is to understand how time influences Pavlovian learning, the fundamental learning process in which humans and animals learn to associate signals with biologically significant events. The study of conditioning is important in part because it is deeply involved in the development (and treatment) of many mental health problems, including (but not limited to) drug dependence and anxiety disorders. Many of the proposed experiments, which will be conducted with laboratory rats, will distinguish between two different ideas about how Pavlovian learning works A view that emphasizes the importance of learning "trials" (occasions on which the signal occurs either with or without the significant event) and another view that ignores trials and emphasizes the organism s perception of time between presentations of the significant event. These ideas and others will be contrasted in number of experiments. Many experiments will investigate the effects of trial spacing in acquisition, whereas others will investigate the effects of trial spacing during learning treatments (extinction and counter conditioning) designed to replace old learning with new learning. All will uncover conditions that "optimize" learning by making it strong and durable. Other experiments will compare the effects of the passage of time and contextual change, and others will investigate the psychological processes involved in discriminating different temporal intervals. The results will increase our understanding of the influence of time and memory on conditioning, and will help reveal the interrelationships between timing and associative learning. Many of the results will also increase our understanding of the causes of relapse after therapy and suggest ways to help prevent or minimize that relapse.
Keywords: association learning, conditioning, perception, response generalization, stimulus interval, behavioral extinction, reinforcer, stimulus generalization, behavior test, behavioral /social science research tag, laboratory rat
Project start date: 2001-12-01
Project end date: 2007-05-31
5R01MH064847-05 (2006): $147940
5R01MH064847-04 (2005): $189375
5R01MH064847-03 (2004): $227250
5R01MH064847-02 (2003): $227250