Encoding of the unconditioned stimulus in Pavlovian conditioning

Three experiments, using rats, demonstrated the encoding of a food unconditioned stimulus (US) in a simple Pavlovian conditioning paradigm. In all three studies, one stimulus was used to signal the delivery of pellets and a different stimulus was used to signal the delivery of sucrose. In Experiment 1, postconditioning devaluation of one of the food USs selectively reduced the frequency of conditioned magazine-directed behavior during the stimulus trained with that US. In Experiment 2, transfer of the stimuli to instrumental responses resulted in selective depression of the response trained with a different outcome. In Experiment 3, acquisition of stimulus-outcome learning was impaired by unsignaled intertrial presentations of the same outcome but not of a different outcome. These results indicate that a detailed representation of the outcome is encoded in the normal course of Pavlovian conditioning.

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