Title:One-Trial Appetitive Learning Tasks for Drug Targeting
Volume: 23
Issue: 6
Author(s): Robert Lalonde*Catherine Strazielle
Affiliation:
- Laboratory of Stress, Immunity, Pathogens (EA 7300), Medical School, University of Lorraine, 54500 Vandoeuvre-les-
Nancy, France
Keywords:
Instrumental learning, pavlovian conditioning, food motivation, water motivation, electroconvulsive shock, cholinergic receptors, retrograde amnesia.
Abstract: One-trial appetitive learning developed from one-trial passive avoidance learning as a
standard test of retrograde amnesia. It consists of one learning trial followed by a retention test, in
which physiological manipulations are presented. As in passive avoidance learning, food- or waterdeprived
rats or mice finding food or water inside an enclosure are vulnerable to the retrograde amnesia
produced by electroconvulsive shock treatment or the injection of various drugs. In one-trial taste
or odor learning conducted in rats, birds, snails, bees, and fruit flies, there is an association between a
food item or odorant and contextual stimuli or the unconditioned stimulus of Pavlovian conditioning.
The odor-related task in bees was sensitive to protein synthesis inhibition as well as cholinergic receptor
blockade, both analogous to results found on the passive avoidance response in rodents, while the
task in fruit flies was sensitive to genetic modifications and aging, as seen in the passive avoidance response
of genetically modified and aged rodents. These results provide converging evidence of interspecies
similarities underlying the neurochemical basis of learning.
