Comparison between the behavioural effects of septal and hippocampal lesions: A review

This article continues where section VIII of Chapter 4 leaves off. The article is filled with psychopharmacological predictions, some of which have since been confirmed. Others still need to be tested. The article follows the conceptual path forced by the synchronization problem. It leads to a reinforcement theory whose network realizations define explicit drive, reinforcement, and incentive motivational concepts.

A Neural Theory of Punishment and Avoidance, II: Quantitative Theory

http://cns.bu.edu/Profiles/Grossberg/Gro.BioPsy2000.pdf

The imbalanced brain: from normal behavior to schizophrenia

Freezing is a species-typical defensive reaction to conditioned threats. While the neural circuitry of aversive Pavlovian behavior has been extensively studied, less is known about the circuitry underlying more active responses to danger. Here we show that the flow of information between the basal amygdala (BA) and the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) is necessary for signaled active avoidance behavior. Rats trained to avoid shock by shuttling during an auditory conditioned stimulus showed increased expression of the activity-dependent protein c-Fos in the NAcc, specifically the shell subregion (NAccSh). Silencing neural activity in the NAccSh, but not in the adjacent NAcc core, disrupted avoidance behavior. Disconnection of the BA and the NAccSh was just as effective at disrupting avoidance behavior as bilateral NAccSh inactivations, suggesting learned avoidance behavior requires an intact BA-NAccSh circuit. Together, these data highlight an essential role for the amygdalar projection to the ventral striatum in aversively motivated actions.

https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/35/8/3470.full.pdf

Active avoidance requires a serial basal amygdala to nucleus accumbens shell circuit.

An investigation was carried out into the part played by background stimuli during Pavlovian conditioning. Groups of rats were presented with tone CSs and unavoidable foot-shock USs. Both CS-US con...

The role of background stimuli during Pavlovian conditioning.

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/com/74/3/426.pdf

W. Keith Douglass

Papers

The inverse relationship between shock intensity and shuttle-box avoidance learning in rats: A reinforcement explanation.