Notes

Some major circuits underlying innate and learned behaviour directed at: Aversion and Reward

Some Major Psychological Components of Processing Aversive Stimuli At psychological level stimuli can be either Innate/Inborn or Learned. An example of Innate stimuli is the communication of a danger through pheromones (chemosignals) which induces an unconditioned response, i.e., either freeze or flight. Built on genomically encoded response, a conditioned response can be learned.

• Pavlovian Stimulus - Stimulus Learning, in these experiments the animals learns to associate a conditioned stimulus (CS) (e.g., a bell ringing) to an unconditioned stimulus (US) (e.g., an electric shock). If this neutral stimulus (CS) can reliably predict the US, then such neutral stimulus will take on the emotional properties of the US. In this example, the response chosen by the mice is freezing.
• Operant Learning Response - US - US - Response, in this scenario the mice is in a conditioning where if a tone is presented the shock can occur in two situations:
  • In the first case, the shock occurs if the mice moves in another chamber of the cage and thus the mice learn to act Passive Avoidance = R - US Learning.
  • Otherwise, if the shock occurs in the same chamber the tone appeared, the mice will move to another chamber, thus learning Active Avoidance = R - US Learning. In this scenario, the mice shows a goal-directed behaviour, however they have no self-awareness.

Aversion Learning: What Is Learned Determines the Emotional-Behavioral State