1. Garcia and Siegel!!!

2. Can anything be turned into a CS?
Equipotentiality Principle:
“Any natural phenomenon chosen at will may be converted into a conditioned stimuolus….any visual stimulus, any desired sound, any odor, and stimulation of any part of the skin” (Pavlov, 1928)

3. Biological boundaries of behavior
Old-school behaviorists emerged as a reaction against the Structuralists.
Rejected biology in error
The equipotentiality principle explains their position:
The choise of any CS, US, R, Sr or P is arbitrary
Any CS can be paired with any US
Any response can be governed by any Sr or P
Once a reinforcer or punisher, always and for everyone in the organism’s class
Biology is irrelevant; anything can be learned

4. Garcia disagreed:
Disagreed with equipotentiality; instead proposed idea of preparedness.
Preparedness: The tendency to associate some CS-UCS combinations more readily then others (selective association)
Garcia & Koellings (1966): Conditioned Taste-Aversion Learning
Development of a severe negative reaction to a food item due to pairing the food with illness or other aversive stimulation

5. Evidence in “Natural’ Environment
Rats have “Bait Shyness”: one trial learning…
One taste of poison & will not eat again
However will go back to the place where the poison was encountered
Did the rat learn only taste-aversion?
Selectively learn?…where’s contiguity?
Only associated taste & odor not visual cues?

6. Garcia Effect or Conditioned Taste Aversion
Grp I: Tasty Water--> Nausea
Good Conditioning
Grp II: Bright Noisy Water-> Shock
Good conditioning
Grp III: Tasty Water--> Shock
No conditioning
Grp IV: Bright Noisy water--> Nausea

7. Garcia Effect or Conditioned Taste Aversion
Grp I: Tasty Water--> Nausea
Good Conditioning
Grp II: Bright Noisy Water-> Shock
Good conditioning
Grp III: Tasty Water--> Shock
No conditioning
Grp IV: Bright Noisy water--> Nausea

8. A “biological boundary” may explain this phenomenon:
Look at the TYPE of stimuli that are being used:
Categorize each as an internal or external event
Grp I: Tasty Water--> Nausea
Internal Internal
Grp II: Bright Noisy Water-> Shock
External External
Grp III: Tasty Water--> Shock
Internal External
Grp IV: Bright Noisy water--> Nausea
External Internal
Can’t learn ACROSS modalities very well!

9. What did Garcia demonstrate?
Learning doesn’t occur in the same manner with any given stimuli paired
Preparedness should vary depending on the species & the environment
Tremendous body of data now show this!

10. Important Properties of Taste Aversion
One trial conditioning
General phenomenon: most species show it
Tolerates long delay
Novel stimuli condition more readily than familiar stimuli
Occurs differently for different species:
quail: color of food
monkeys: texture
rats: taste and smell
In social animals- can transmit stimulus socially

11. Uses
Humans: dietary restrictions and smoking cessation programs (but will switch brands and tastes)
Can develop CTA with Chemotherapy- must watch pairing good food with nausea
Most important use: Wildlife Management:
Coyote management
Wolf management
Bear management

12. Application: How can you keep your dog out of the garbage?

13. Other Examples of Preparedness?
Sign Tracking
Form of the CR changes with the CS
Compensatory Responses

14. Sign Tracking SIGN TRACKING: Brown and Jenkins 1974
Sign Tracking : animals tend to
Orient themselves toward the CS (not the US)
Approach
Explore any stimuli that are good predictors of important events such as the delivery of food

15. 1
Set up:
Initial training: Light turns on above feederfeeder releases pieces of hot dog
Test:
Light turns on above feeder, then above each of the other walls
Forms a sequence of 1234
3. What is optimal response?
4. But: Dog “tracked the sign” 4 2 3
Jenkins, Barrara, Ireland and Woodside (1976)

16. Wolin. 1959:
Form of the response changes depending on the stimulus eliciting that response.
Was actually operant conditioning student of Skinner’s.
Used food rewards versus Water rewards

17. Water pecks vs. food pecks
Discovered “pecking” was different between the two:
Food peck:
rapid, powerful thrusts of head with beak OPEN
head bounces off key
Water peck:
slower extension of head
beak almost closed
remains immersed in water
drinking = pumping action of tongue
scooping motion of beak

18. Changes in form of response
Pecking rate varied depending on terminal event
Food pecks faster
Water pecks slower
One of first to suggest that “terminal event” may guide both classical and operant responses

19. Demonstration of addiction, tolerance and withdrawal or
Siegel, 1976
Demonstration of addiction, tolerance and withdrawal or
Cues are EVERYWHERE!

20. Defining Addiction Remember it’s the 1970’s
DSM II going into DSM III
addiction = psychological process
Define tolerance and addiction
Addiction = psychological need (at this point)
Tolerance:
decreasing effectiveness of drug
requiring increasing amounts to get same effect
become dependent on drug
Withdrawal:
physiological symptoms which occur with withdrawal of drug
suggests dependence

21. Do Animals Show “Addiction”?
Most animals will not begin drugs on their own
have to “preload”
initial response to drugs such as morphine = decreased responding
then increase in responding to gain access
do show tolerance and withdrawal
once addicted, process is same
symptoms overlap as well
thus: indicates must be physiological in nature, not just “psychological”

22. Opiate Tolerance:
Emphasizes associative characteristics of drug administrative procedure
Shows that it is the associative pairing that may be critical
Notes that tolerance is maintained over long time periods, and even after ECS
Show several characteristics
Retention of tolerance is long and strong
Metabolic intervention changes parameters of tolerance
Retardation of consolidation of tolerance when add memory disruptors as learning (e.g. ECS, etc.)

23. Opponent processes in classical conditioning
Drug Tolerance Research:
Drug tolerance = decrease in effectiveness of a drug with repeated usage
Many theories as to why occurs- e.g.- opponent process theory
Seigel (1975): proposed is due to classical conditioning:
used morphine (analgesic)
decrease in analgesia over successive morphine injections controlled by contextual stimuli

24. Original study: Rats and hot plate
Rats given injections of morphine across several stimulus trials:
First three trials-
kept context cues identical
got decreasing analgesia
4th trial-
changed location of injections to home cage-
got increase in analgesic effects
Why:
context cues acquired capacity to elicit compensatory CR's of hyperalgesia
When changed context, these cues were gone

25. Siegel: CR not equal UR! Difficult to predict form of the CR:
may be identical to very similar
may be opposite
Compensatory responses: compensate for or counteract the UR
Literature review at the time supported this.

27. Opponent Process: Time curve analysis of these responses:
opponent processes
for every action there is a reaction!

28. Can Predict Response?
Figure A: drug not yet associated with predrug environmental cues; drug effect not yet modulated by any anticipatory responding
Figure B:
as effect of drug increases and decays following administration, increasing frequency of drug and environmental context pairing
drug administration not only followed by pharmacological UCR, but also by drug compensatory CR
net drug effect is smaller than initial because drug UR is attenuated by compensatory CR

29. Can Predict Response? Figure C:
Interaction between drug UR and preparatory CR after many trials
CR is large, net result of interaction between this CR and direct drug effect is very small
Note: Biphasic: paradoxical conditioning or opposite conditioning effect!
Can actually become HYPERSENSITIVE to effects at higher dosage!
This is how you die!
So: what are withdrawal symptoms?

30. Learning Effects? Physical Effects: Notice: Learning effects:
Body again rebounding
Expecting something- but not happening
Step down reflex: Alpha and Beta Receptors
If go on long enough: Marilyn Monroe
Notice: Learning effects:
Needle begins to be CS for heroin
But notice: opposite effect (process B) to the needle
Stimuli can become conditioned to the "emotion"

31. What stimuli can serve as cues?
ANY environmental cue predicting drug
tolerance occurs because of context of environmental cues that predict drug
in sense, tolerance is a learning effect, not a true drug effect
what are cues?
Environmental
Physical
Psychological

32. What stimuli can serve as cues?
Environmental cues:
the place setting: room, lighting, sounds, etc.
the experimenter
time of day
olfactory cues
Physical effects of the drug
state of body
initial effects

33. What stimuli can serve as cues?
Signaled vs. Unsignaled cues:
Much stronger conditioning to signaled cues
More predictive!
Can develop discriminative control of tolerance
Show in some settings, not in others
Can have VARIED response to same drug, and dose!

34. How can we retard tolerance?
CS habituation
Partial reinforcement of tolerance:
Different strengths of street drugs
not all CSs followed by US/same US
dilute CS-US relationship
extinction of tolerance

35. The Expectancy Effect Expect effects dependent on environmental cues
Thus, show compensatory responses when “expect” drug
These are simply withdrawal effects

36. look at responses compared in table 6.2 on page 157

37. Humans react the same!

38. The Dopamine Reward Pathway How Dopamine leads to behavior change
Dopamine required for natural stimuli (food, opportunity for mating, etc) to be rewarding and drive behavior
Natural rewards and addictive drugs both cause dopamine release in the Nucleus Acumbens
Addictive drugs mimic effects of natural rewards and thus shape behavior

39. The Dopamine Reward Pathway How Dopamine leads to behavior change
Survival demands that organisms find and obtain needed resources (food, shelter) and opportunity for mating despite risks -survival relevant goals
These goals have natural “rewards” (eating, safety, sex)
Behaviors with rewarding goals persist to a conclusion and increase over time as they are positively reinforcing
Dopamine is a “feedback” system”:
If it is a rewarding behavior….then do it again!
If it is not a rewarding behavior, don’t do it.

40. The Dopamine Reward Pathway How Dopamine leads to behavior change
Internal states (hunger) increase value of goal-related cues and increase pleasure of consumption
As internal states increase, seeking behavior for a resolution to that increases
Thus: likelihood that complex behavioral sequence (hunting) will be brought to successful conclusion

41. The Dopamine Reward Pathway How Dopamine leads to behavior change
Behavioral sequences involved in obtaining reward (steps required to hunt) become overlearned/automatized
Automatized behavioral repertoires can be activated by cues which are predictive of reward

42. Prediction Error Hypothesis: Schultz, 1999; 2005
Exposure to an unexpected reward causes transient firing of dopamine neurons which signals brain to learn a cue.
Once cue is learned, burst of firing occurs at cue, not at reward.
If the reward does not arrive, dopamine firing will decrease below baseline levels  serves as an error signal about reward predictions
If reward comes at unexpected time, dopamine firing will increase  positive predictive error signal: “better than expected!”
Remember Rescorla-Wagner!

43. Dopamine Gating Hypothesis: Berringer
Because drugs cause dopamine release (due to pharmacological actions), dopamine firing upon use does not decay over time  brain repeatedly gets positive predictive error signal: “better than expected!”
Drug cues become ubiquitous (drug cues difficult to extinguish)
Cues that predict drug availability take on enormous incentive salience (consolidates drug seeking behavior)
Drug cues will become powerfully over-weighted compared to other choices (contributes to loss of control over drug use)

44. Clinical Implications
Addictive behaviors are a important and normal part of human behavior
Addictive drugs pharmacologically modify functioning of reward circuits to overvalue drug rewards and reduce the comparative value of other rewards
Intention to stop use is not enough to stably quit substance use.

45. So: Treatment of addiction
First: detox…..get drugs out of system
Next: work on breaking
The operant response of seeking
The cues that predict the drug
Easy-peasy, correct?

46. Is relapse higher for drug addiction?
Yes, it is up there and comparable to other “behavioral” diseases
How are addiction, hypertension and asthma behavioral disorders?

47. What does work?
Understanding the importance of environmental setting cues and conditions
Drug paraphernalia itself
Environmental cues: location, time of day, activities etc.
People: Family, friends, etc.
Stressors: what stressors are related to drug addiction
Two potential types of alchoholism:
Excitement seeking
Risk/aversion avoidance
Treatment of “triggers” will be very different

48. What does work? Must rebuild new cues linked to positive behavior
New rules for living
New friends
New social skills
New skills for dealing with stressors, etc.
Sober Living House programs are very effective
Allow slow transition back into life
Allows for learning to fluency the new skills and cues

49. Is this just true for addiction?
What about other “habits”?
Takes 2-3 weeks to change a habit
That is about how long it takes to change neural circuits
Any long term behavior change must involve change of cues as well as change in behavior
Think of dieting, etc.
Transitioning of treatment programs: special schools placement back to regular schools
Others?

50. What does this mean for applied setting?
Must pay attention to environmental cues
both intentional cues
and unintentional cues
Remember that this learning is VERY robust!
May be stronger than you think
even smallest cues, if reinforced, can maintain the behavior
explains why relapse is so common and prevalent
also explains why so difficult to treat:
Detox and treatment centers vs real world
What happens when put individuals back into their original setting?