NEUR 4306 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Operant Conditioning, Conditioned Place Preference, Headache
16 Jul 2020
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It makes sense to use models of learning to understand the addiction cycle: when an organism learns to associated and rewarding event with a behaviour they will repeat it, aberrant learning learning gone wrong, maladaptive. Learning 3 ways that animals can learn: 1. Less relevant for the concept of addiction: 2. Increased lever pressing, more likely to take pain meds, taking drugs to alleviate withdrawal. Using principles of learning to model addiction: discovering the neural basis of reward, 1953: olds and milner discovered that animals will actively seek out electrical stimulation of specific brain regions. Identified the medial forbrain bundle as important for reward: 1. Brain stimulation reward (bsr or icss: unilateral electrode placement in area of the brain that supports bsr. Like slot machines: on a vr schedule. Initially train animals under continuous reinforcement (every lever press = drug reward)
