Impacts of inter-trial interval duration on a computational model of sign-tracking vs. goal-tracking behaviour

Cinotti, F. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2921-0901, Marchand, A. R., Roesch, M. R., Girard, B. and Khamassi, M. (2019) Impacts of inter-trial interval duration on a computational model of sign-tracking vs. goal-tracking behaviour. Psychopharmacology, 236 (8). pp. 2373-2388. ISSN 1432-2072 doi: 10.1007/s00213-019-05323-y

Abstract/Summary

In the context of Pavlovian conditioning, two types of behaviour may emerge within the population (Flagel et al. Nature, 469(7328): 53–57, 2011). Animals may choose to engage either with the conditioned stimulus (CS), a behaviour known as sign-tracking (ST) which is sensitive to dopamine inhibition for its acquisition, or with the food cup in which the reward or unconditioned stimulus (US) will eventually be delivered, a behaviour known as goal-tracking (GT) which is dependent on dopamine for its expression only. Previous work by Lesaint et al. (PLoS Comput Biol, 10(2), 2014) offered a computational explanation for these phenomena and led to the prediction that varying the duration of the inter-trial interval (ITI) would change the relative ST-GT proportion in the population as well as phasic dopamine responses. A recent study verified this prediction, but also found a rich variance of ST and GT behaviours within the trial which goes beyond the original computational model. In this paper, we provide a computational perspective on these novel results.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/120884
Identification Number/DOI	10.1007/s00213-019-05323-y
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology
Publisher	Springer
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