This project is concerned with understanding extinction, the loss of learned performance that occurs when a Pavlovian signal or an instrumental action is repeatedly presented without its reinforcer. Extinction is a naturally-occurring process of behavior change, as well as a tool used in clinical treatments designed to eliminate unwanted thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in humans. Although it is tempting to assume that extinction erases the original learning, extinguished performance readily recovers, and several recovery effects (e.g., renewal, reinstatement, rapid reacquisition, spontaneous recovery, and resurgence) indicate that the original learning may be largely intact. In addition, because these effects can be interpreted as effects of changing the background or """"""""context,"""""""" they suggest that extinction results from new inhibitory learning that is especially sensitive to the context in which it is learned. The goal of this project is to seek an integrated understanding of extinction as it is revealed in these and other response-recovery processes. It will focus especially on the extinction of instrumental (operant) learning, because principles of operant learning are crucial for understanding a range of behavior problems-such as smoking, drug abuse, and eating and overeating-in which voluntary contact with reinforces plays an essential role. The experiments will involve rats as subjects. One set will test new methods for reducing the """"""""renewal effect"""""""" (in which extinguished behavior relapses when the context is changed after extinction) and """"""""resurgence"""""""" (in which a behavior has been extinguished and replaced by a second behavior relapses when the replacement behavior is itself extinguished). Another set will examine ways to inhibit """"""""rapid reacquisition"""""""" (in which an extinguished action rapidly spirals into relapse when action-reinforcer pairings are reintroduced) and test the effects of hunger as a contextual stimulus influencing relapse. A third set will analyze the extinction-enhancing effects of administering D-cycloserine (a partial agonist of a brain receptor that is thought to play a role in learning), as well as new hypotheses about how to enhance the generalization of extinction to new contexts. A fourth set will analyze the extinction of sequences or """"""""chains"""""""" of behavior in which the subject must purchase (or procure) access to the reinforcer before she can consume (or """"""""take"""""""") it. The results will increase our understanding of extinction, a fundamental behavioral and clinical phenomenon, and develop new ways to help promote extinction learning so as to minimize lapse and relapse.

Public Health Relevance

Instrumental learning is the source of many unhealthy behaviors, such as smoking, drug abuse, and overeating. The proposed research will study the elimination of instrumental behavior through extinction, a form of learning in which humans and other organisms learn to inhibit their actions. The findings will help develop new conceptual tools and methods to promote the durability of extinction learning, and thus reduce the possibility of lapse and relapse.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01DA033123-12
Application #
8415523
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-BBBP-V (02))
Program Officer
Volman, Susan
Project Start
2001-12-01
Project End
2017-04-30
Budget Start
2013-05-01
Budget End
2014-04-30
Support Year
12
Fiscal Year
2013
Total Cost
$329,400
Indirect Cost
$113,400
Name
University of Vermont & St Agric College
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
066811191
City
Burlington
State
VT
Country
United States
Zip Code
05405
Thrailkill, Eric A; Trask, Sydney; Vidal, Pedro et al. (2018) Stimulus control of actions and habits: A role for reinforcer predictability and attention in the development of habitual behavior. J Exp Psychol Anim Learn Cogn 44:370-384
Thrailkill, Eric A; Porritt, Fay; Kacelnik, Alex et al. (2018) Maintaining performance in searching dogs: Evidence from a rat model that training to detect a second (irrelevant) stimulus can maintain search and detection responding. Behav Processes 157:161-170
Trask, Sydney (2018) Cues Associated with Alternative Reinforcement During Extinction Can Attenuate Resurgence of an Extinguished Instrumental Response. Learn Behav :
Trask, Sydney; Bouton, Mark E (2018) Retrieval practice after multiple context changes, but not long retention intervals, reduces the impact of a final context change on instrumental behavior. Learn Behav 46:213-221
Shipman, Megan L; Trask, Sydney; Bouton, Mark E et al. (2018) Inactivation of prelimbic and infralimbic cortex respectively affects minimally-trained and extensively-trained goal-directed actions. Neurobiol Learn Mem 155:164-172
Miles, Olivia W; Thrailkill, Eric A; Linden, Anne K et al. (2018) Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Peptide in the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis Mediates Stress-Induced Reinstatement of Cocaine Seeking in Rats. Neuropsychopharmacology 43:978-986
Bouton, Mark E (2018) Extinction of instrumental (operant) learning: interference, varieties of context, and mechanisms of contextual control. Psychopharmacology (Berl) :
Podlesnik, Christopher A; Kelley, Michael E; Jimenez-Gomez, Corina et al. (2017) Renewed behavior produced by context change and its implications for treatment maintenance: A review. J Appl Behav Anal 50:675-697
Trask, Sydney; Thrailkill, Eric A; Bouton, Mark E (2017) Occasion setting, inhibition, and the contextual control of extinction in Pavlovian and instrumental (operant) learning. Behav Processes 137:64-72
Thrailkill, Eric A; Bouton, Mark E (2017) Effects of outcome devaluation on instrumental behaviors in a discriminated heterogeneous chain. J Exp Psychol Anim Learn Cogn 43:88-95

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