Habituation Contributes to Within‐session Changes in Free Wheel Running

Abstract

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that habituation contributes to the regulation of wheel running. Rats ran in a wheel for 30-min sessions. Experiment 1 demonstrated spontaneous recovery. Rats ran more and the within-session decreases in running were smaller after 2 days of wheel deprivation than after 1 day. Experiment 2 demonstrated dishabituation. Running rate increased immediately after the termination of a brief extra event (application of the brake or flashing of the houselight). Experiment 3 demonstrated stimulus specificity. Rats completed the second half of the session in either the same wheel as the first half, or a different wheel. Second-half running was faster in the latter case. Within-session patterns of running were well described by equations that describe data from the habituation, motivation, and operant literatures. These results suggest that habituation contributes to the regulation of running. In fact, habituation provides a better explanation for the termination of wheel running than fatigue, the variable to which this termination is usually attributed. Overall, the present findings are consistent with the proposition that habituation and sensitization contribute to the regulation of several forms of motivated behavior.

Neotic preferences in laboratory rodents: Issues, assessment and substrates

“…References to dishabituation apply particularly to studies of odor discrimination (Brown, 1988;Schellinck et al, 1995). While strictly speaking such terminology may be appropriate especially with activity (rather than choice) measures of responsiveness to novel stimulation (Aoyama and McSweeney, 2001;Terry, 1979), in the case of active choices of novel stimuli it is debatable if it is more informative than merely describing them as investigation of novelty, particularly since habituation (and presumably dishabituation) of neotic behavior may be a different phenomenon from habituation of orienting or reflexive responses (see above).…”

The “prawn-in-the-tube” procedure in the cuttlefish: Habituation or passive avoidance learning?

“…Studies on dishabituation showed that one stimulus can be considered as an effective dishabituator when it induces a response, different, or not, from the response produced by the habituatory stimulus. In other words, all stimuli, that are sufficiently intense to produce an increase in the state of vigilance, are able to produce dishabituation of the habituated response (Groves and Thompson 1970;Mongeluzi and Frost 2000;Aoyama and McSweeney 2001). So, the absence of dishabituation in our experiments cannot be due to chosen dishabituatory stimuli (crab, flashing light) because an increase in the state of arousal of the cuttlefish was universally observed with the two stimuli.…”

“…In studies with rats, Groves and Thompson (1970) trained animals to inhibit startle response to repeated acoustic stimulation, presenting 17 habituation stimuli at 1-min intervals; they reported that the rats showed recovery of the response immediately after a novel stimulus (flashing light) given between the 14th and the 15th habituation trial. Rats given a 30-min session in a running wheel each day over a 20-d training period (Aoyama and McSweeney 2001) showed dishabituation immediately after a brief extra event (the application of a brake or a flashing of the house light) lasting 5 sec, given 20 min 55 sec after the beginning of a free running session. In Aplysia, Marcus et al (1988) obtained an increase in siphon withdrawal reflex 90 sec after the administration of an arousing stimulus (mild tactile stimulus) given just after habituation (20 habituation stimuli at 30-sec intervals).…”

“…The flashing light employed as a dishabituatory stimulus in Experiment 3 (Fig. 1) might be considered as an unspecific dishabituatory stimulus, since it has been widely employed on different models (Groves and Thompson 1970;Post and von der Emde 1999;Aoyama and McSweeney 2001), but we know that visual modality is much used by cuttlefish (Messenger 1968).…”

The relation of multiple-schedule behavioral contrast to deprivation, time in session, and within-session changes in responding

“…Changing the reinforcer for a brief time late in the session increases the response rate once the original reinforcer is restored (Aoyama & McSweeney, 2001a;McSweeney & Roll, 1998). The response rate increases regardless of whether the change is an increase or a decrease in the amount of reinforcer delivered and regardless of whether the change produces an increase or a decrease in response rate while it is in effect.…”