Context specificity of both acquisition and extinction of a Pavlovian conditioned response

Starosta, Sarah, Uengoer, Metin, Bartetzko, Isabelle, Lucke, Sara, Güntürkün, Onur, Stüttgen, Maik C (November 2016) Context specificity of both acquisition and extinction of a Pavlovian conditioned response. Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.), 23 (11). pp. 639-643. ISSN 1072-0502

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Abstract

It is widely held that the extinction of a conditioned response is more context specific than its initial acquisition. One proposed explanation is that context serves to disambiguate the meaning of a stimulus. Using a procedure that equated the learning histories of the contexts, we show that the memory of an appetitive Pavlovian association can be highly context specific despite being unambiguous. This result is inconsistent with predictions of the Rescorla-Wagner model of learning but in line with configural accounts of contextual control of behavior. We propose an explanatory model in which context serves to modulate the gain of associative strength and which expands upon the configural idea of unitary representations of context and conditioned stimuli.

Item Type: Paper
Subjects: organism description > animal behavior
organism description > animal behavior > memory
CSHL Authors:
Communities: CSHL labs > Kepecs lab
SWORD Depositor: CSHL Elements
Depositing User: CSHL Elements
Date: November 2016
Date Deposited: 12 Sep 2024 20:08
Last Modified: 12 Sep 2024 20:08
PMCID: PMC5066607
Related URLs:
URI: https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/41660

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