Learned persistence at 11-12 days but not at 10-11 days in infant rats

A behavioral roadmap for the development of agency in the rodent

Behavioral interactions within the nuclear family play a pivotal role in the emergence of agency: the capacity to regulate physiological, psychological and social needs. While behaviors may develop over days or weeks in line with nervous system maturation, individual behaviors can occur on sub-second time scales making it challenging to track development in lab studies with brief observation periods, or in field studies with limited temporal precision and animal identification. Here we study development in families of gerbils, a highly social rodent, collecting tens of millions of behavior time points and implementing machine learning methods to track individual subjects. We provided maturing gerbils with a large, undisturbed environment between postnatal day 15 and the age at which they would typically disperse from the family unit (day 30). We identified complex and distinct developmental trajectories for food and water acquisition, solitary exploration, and social behaviors, some of which displayed sex differences and diurnal patterns. Our work supports the emergence of well-delineated autonomous and social behavior phenotypes that correlate with specific periods and loci of neural maturation.

Why a neuromaturational model of memory fails: exuberant learning in early infancy

The characteristics of memory in infants and adults seem vastly different. The neuromaturational model attributes these differences to an ontogenetic change in the basic memory process, namely, to the hierarchical maturation of two distinct memory systems. The early-maturing (implicit) system is functional during the first third of infancy and supports the gradual learning of perceptual and motor skills; the late-maturing (explicit) system supports representations of contextually specific events, relationships, and associations. An alternative model holds that the basic memory process does not change, but what infants and adults select to encode for learning does. This ontogenetic change in selective attention has been mistaken for an ontogenetic shift in the basic memory process. Over the last 25 years, evidence from transfer studies with developing rats and human infants has revealed that the first third of infancy is actually a period of exuberant learning that ends, not coincidentally, at the same age that the late-maturing memory system presumably emerges. This article reviews data from recent studies of sensory preconditioning, potentiation, associative chains, and transitive inference with human infants that support this conclusion-data for which the neuromaturational model cannot account. Fast mapping is a general learning mechanism that accounts for this evidence.

Rapid acquisition of operant conditioning in 5-day-old rat pups: a new technique articulating suckling-related motor activity and milk reinforcement

Newborn rats are capable of obtaining milk by attaching to a surrogate nipple. During this procedure pups show a gradual increase in head and forelimb movements oriented towards the artificial device that are similar to those observed during nipple attachment. In the present study the probability of execution of these behaviors was analyzed as a function of their contingency with intraoral milk infusion using brief training procedures (15 min). Five-day-old pups were positioned in a smooth surface having access to a touch-sensitive sensor. Physical contact with the sensor activated an infusion pump which served to deliver intraoral milk reinforcement (Paired group). Yoked controls received the reinforcer when Paired neonates touched the sensor. Paired pups trained under a continuous reinforcement schedule emitted significantly more responses than Yoked controls following two (Experiment 1) or one training session (Experiment 2). These differences were also observed during an extinction session conducted immediately after training. The level of maternal deprivation before training (3 or 6 hr) or the volume of milk delivered (1.0 or 1.5 microl per pulse) did not affect acquisition or extinction performances. In addition, it was observed that the rate of responding of Paired pups during the early phase of the extinction session significantly predicted subsequent levels of acceptance of the reinforcer. These results indicate that the frequency of suckling-related behaviors can be rapidly modified by means of associative operant processes. The operant procedure here described represents an alternative tool for the ontogenetic analysis of self-administration or behavior processes of seeking.

Evaluation of developmental neurotoxicity of organotins via drinking water in rats: Monomethyl tin

Organotins such as monomethyltin (MMT) are widely used as heat stabilizers in PVC and CPVC piping, which results in their presence in drinking water supplies. Concern for neurotoxicity produced by organotin exposure during development has been raised by published findings of a deficit on a runway learning task in rat pups perinatally exposed to MMT (Noland EA, Taylor DH, Bull RJ. Monomethyl and trimethyltin compounds induce learning deficiencies in young rats. Neurobehav Toxicol Teratol 1982;4:539-44). The objective of these studies was to replicate the earlier publication and further define the dose-response characteristics of MMT following perinatal exposure. In Experiment 1, female Sprague-Dawley rats were exposed via drinking water to MMT (0, 10, 50, 245 ppm) before mating and throughout gestation and lactation (until weaning at postnatal day [PND] 21). Behavioral assessments of the offspring included: a runway test (PND 11) in which the rat pups learned to negotiate a runway for dry suckling reward; motor activity habituation (PNDs 13, 17, and 21); learning in the Morris water maze (as adults). Other endpoints in the offspring included measures of apoptosis (DNA fragmentation) at PND 22 and as adults, as well as brain weights and neuropathological evaluation at PND 2, 12, 22, and as adults. There were no effects on any measure of growth, development, cognitive function, or apoptosis following MMT exposure. There was a trend towards decreased brain weight in the high dose group. In addition, there was vacuolation of the neuropil in a focal area of the cerebral cortex of the adult offspring in all MMT dose groups (1-3 rats per treatment group). In Experiment 2, pregnant rats were exposed from gestational day 6 until weaning to 500 ppm MMT in drinking water. The offspring behavioral assessments again included the runway task (PND 11), motor activity habituation (PND 17), and Morris water maze (as adults). In this second study, MMT-exposed females consumed significantly less water than the controls throughout both gestation and lactation, although neither dam nor pup weights were affected. As in Experiment 1, MMT-exposure did not alter pup runway performance, motor activity, or cognitive function. These results indicate that perinatal exposure to MMT, even at concentrations which decrease fluid intake, does not result in significant neurobehavioral or cognitive deficits. While mild neuropathological lesions were observed in the adult offspring, the biological significance of this restricted finding is unclear.

Selective activity enhancement and persistence in weanling rats after hippocampal X-irradiation in infancy: possible relevance for ADHD

We examined the effects of focal X-irradiation of the hippocampus in infancy on the partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) in weanling rats in a runway and on running wheel activity at 40 days of age. Our results show a dose-dependent X-irradiation-related reduction in granule cell neurogenesis. Weanling rats showed a corresponding increase in running speed in both acquisition and extinction and a dose-dependent reduction in the PREE--an increase in persistence after CRF and a decrease in persistence after PRF training. The same degree of hippocampal granule cell agenesis had no effect on running wheel activity. These results suggest that the enhanced speeds in the runway are incentive-related and do not reflect simple hyperactivity but rather hyperreactivity. The discussion of these results is in part a speculation regarding their possible relation to some explanations of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder in children.

Learning under partial reinforcement in the toad (Bufo arenarum): effects of lesions in the medial pallium

Two experiments studied the adjustment of toads (Bufo arenarum) to partial reinforcement in a runway. In Experiment 1, two groups received 24 daily trials of either continuous reinforcement (CR) or 50% partial reinforcement (PR). Training parameters that facilitate the PR extinction effect (greater resistance to extinction after PR than CR training) in rats were selected. PR impaired performance during acquisition but had no effect on performance during extinction relative to CR. In Experiment 2, four groups were trained in a factorial design involving CR and PR, and a lesion of the medial pallium and a sham operation. Performance during acquisition was again impaired by PR, but the medial pallium lesions had no effect. The lesion, however, increased resistance to extinction after both CR and PR training. The results are discussed in relation to comparative research on learning and to the hypothesized homology of the amphibian medial pallium and the mammalian hippocampal formation.

Adjustment of weanling and adolescent rats to a reward condition requiring slow responding

The effects of a schedule of discontinuously negatively correlated reinforcement (DNC), in which only approach responses that take 5 sec or longer are reinforced, were studied in weanling rats that began training at 18 days of age and adolescents that began training at 60 days. Yoked partially reinforced subjects (PRF) received rewards on the same trials as corresponding DNC subjects of the same age, whereas continuously reinforced subjects (CRF) were rewarded on all trials. At the end of DNC training (210 trials), the older but not the younger DNC subjects were running slower than their yoked-PRF controls. The results are consistent with development of inhibition and suppression related to the developing brain, particularly the hippocampus.

Retention under changed-reward conditions of persistence learned by infant rats

Two experiments were performed to determine whether or not persistence acquired under reinforcement conditions of infancy can be retained and transferred to adult reinforcing conditions. In Experiment I 2 groups of rats 14-15 days of age were trained in a runway under a partial (PRF) or continuous (CRF) schedule of milk-suckling reinforcement. A 3rd group was trained under continuous nonreinforcement (NRF) conditions. The PRF and CRF groups acquired the approach response about equally, and the NRF showed a very small increase in speed. In immediate extinction, the PRF group was more resistant to extinction than its CRS counterpart. For the NRF group "extinction" produced a continuation of the low-level "acquisition" performance. Experiment II showed that persistence acquired at 14-15 days with milk-suckling reinforcement can be sustained through a 2-week retention period including a phase of CRF food-pellet reward.