TY - JOUR A1 - Andreatta, Marta A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Appetitive vs. aversive conditioning in humans JF - Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience N2 - In classical conditioning, an initially neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) becomes associated with a biologically salient event (unconditioned stimulus, US), which might be pain (aversive conditioning) or food (appetitive conditioning). After a few associations, the CS is able to initiate either defensive or consummatory responses, respectively. Contrary to aversive conditioning, appetitive conditioning is rarely investigated in humans, although its importance for normal and pathological behaviors (e.g., obesity, addiction) is undeniable. The present study intents to translate animal findings on appetitive conditioning to humans using food as an US. Thirty-three participants were investigated between 8 and 10 am without breakfast in order to assure that they felt hungry. During two acquisition phases, one geometrical shape (avCS+) predicted an aversive US (painful electric shock), another shape (appCS+) predicted an appetitive US (chocolate or salty pretzel according to the participants' preference), and a third shape (CS) predicted neither US. In a extinction phase, these three shapes plus a novel shape (NEW) were presented again without US delivery. Valence and arousal ratings as well as startle and skin conductance (SCR) responses were collected as learning indices. We found successful aversive and appetitive conditioning. On the one hand, the avCS+ was rated as more negative and more arousing than the CS and induced startle potentiation and enhanced SCR. On the other hand, the appCS+ was rated more positive than the CS and induced startle attenuation and larger SCR. In summary, we successfully confirmed animal findings in (hungry) humans by demonstrating appetitive learning and normal aversive learning. KW - extinction KW - attention KW - classical conditioning KW - skin conductance response KW - punishment KW - startle reflex KW - reward KW - fear KW - startle KW - model Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-148614 VL - 9 IS - 128 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Appel, Mirjam A1 - Scholz, Claus-Jürgen A1 - Kocabey, Samet A1 - Savage, Sinead A1 - König, Christian A1 - Yarali, Ayse T1 - Independent natural genetic variation of punishment- versus relief-memory JF - Biology Letters N2 - A painful event establishes two opponent memories: cues that are associated with pain onset are remembered negatively, whereas cues that coincide with the relief at pain offset acquire positive valence. Such punishment-versus relief-memories are conserved across species, including humans, and the balance between them is critical for adaptive behaviour with respect to pain and trauma. In the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster as a study case, we found that both punishment-and relief-memories display natural variation across wild-derived inbred strains, but they do not covary, suggesting a considerable level of dissociation in their genetic effectors. This provokes the question whether there may be heritable inter-individual differences in the balance between these opponent memories in man, with potential psycho-clinical implications. KW - associative memory KW - Drosophila melanogaster KW - natural genetic variation KW - opponent processes KW - punishment KW - fruit-flies KW - relief KW - reward KW - rats Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-186554 VL - 12 IS - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Blechert, Jens A1 - Meule, Adrian A1 - Busch, Niko A. A1 - Ohla, Kathrin T1 - Food-pics: an image database for experimental research on eating and appetite JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Our current environment is characterized by the omnipresence of food cues. The sight and smell of real foods, but also graphically depictions of appetizing foods, can guide our eating behavior, for example, by eliciting food craving and influencing food choice. The relevance of visual food cues on human information processing has been demonstrated by a growing body of studies employing food images across the disciplines of psychology, medicine, and neuroscience. However, currently used food image sets vary considerably across laboratories and image characteristics (contrast, brightness, etc.) and food composition (calories, macronutrients, etc.) are often unspecified. These factors might have contributed to some of the inconsistencies of this research. To remedy this, we developed food-pics, a picture database comprising 568 food images and 315 non-food images along with detailed meta-data. A total of N = 1988 individuals with large variance in age and weight from German speaking countries and North America provided normative ratings of valence, arousal, palatability, desire to eat, recognizability and visual complexity. Furthermore, data on macronutrients (g), energy density (kcal), and physical image characteristics (color composition, contrast, brightness, size, complexity) are provided. The food-pics image database is freely available under the creative commons license with the hope that the set will facilitate standardization and comparability across studies and advance experimental research on the determinants of eating behavior. Read F KW - food-cues KW - standardized food images KW - ERP KW - image properties KW - anorexia nervosa KW - restrained eaters KW - high calorie KW - brain KW - weight loss KW - visual-attention KW - responses KW - cues KW - reward KW - hunger KW - fMRI KW - eating behavior KW - obesity KW - food pictures Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-115987 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 5 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - El-Keredy, Amira A1 - Schleyer, Michael A1 - König, Christian A1 - Ekim, Aslihan A1 - Gerber, Bertram T1 - Behavioural Analyses of Quinine Processing in Choice, Feeding and Learning of Larval Drosophila JF - PLoS One N2 - Gustatory stimuli can support both immediate reflexive behaviour, such as choice and feeding, and can drive internal reinforcement in associative learning. For larval Drosophila, we here provide a first systematic behavioural analysis of these functions with respect to quinine as a study case of a substance which humans report as "tasting bitter". We describe the dose-effect functions for these different kinds of behaviour and find that a half-maximal effect of quinine to suppress feeding needs substantially higher quinine concentrations (2.0 mM) than is the case for internal reinforcement (0.6 mM). Interestingly, in previous studies (Niewalda et al. 2008, Schipanski et al 2008) we had found the reverse for sodium chloride and fructose/sucrose, such that dose-effect functions for those tastants were shifted towards lower concentrations for feeding as compared to reinforcement, arguing that the differences in dose-effect function between these behaviours do not reflect artefacts of the types of assay used. The current results regarding quinine thus provide a starting point to investigate how the gustatory system is organized on the cellular and/or molecular level to result in different behavioural tuning curves towards a bitter tastant. KW - honeybees KW - chemosensory system KW - bitter taste KW - melanogaster KW - receptor KW - reward KW - brain KW - organization KW - architecture KW - perception Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-130811 VL - 7 IS - 7 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hahn, Tim A1 - Dresler, Thomas A1 - Pyka, Martin A1 - Notebaert, Karolien A1 - Fallgatter, Andreas J. T1 - Local Synchronization of Resting-State Dynamics Encodes Gray's Trait Anxiety JF - PLoS ONE N2 - The Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) as defined within the Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) modulates reactions to stimuli indicating aversive events. Gray's trait Anxiety determines the extent to which stimuli activate the BIS. While studies have identified the amygdala-septo-hippocampal circuit as the key-neural substrate of this system in recent years and measures of resting-state dynamics such as randomness and local synchronization of spontaneous BOLD fluctuations have recently been linked to personality traits, the relation between resting-state dynamics and the BIS remains unexplored. In the present study, we thus examined the local synchronization of spontaneous fMRI BOLD fluctuations as measured by Regional Homogeneity (ReHo) in the hippocampus and the amygdala in twenty-seven healthy subjects. Correlation analyses showed that Gray's trait Anxiety was significantly associated with mean ReHo in both the amygdala and the hippocampus. Specifically, Gray's trait Anxiety explained 23% and 17% of resting-state ReHo variance in the left amygdala and the left hippocampus, respectively. In summary, we found individual differences in Gray's trait Anxiety to be associated with ReHo in areas previously associated with BIS functioning. Specifically, higher ReHo in resting-state neural dynamics corresponded to lower sensitivity to punishment scores both in the amygdala and the hippocampus. These findings corroborate and extend recent findings relating resting-state dynamics and personality while providing first evidence linking properties of resting-state fluctuations to Gray's BIS. KW - reward KW - bold activity KW - amygdala KW - brain KW - personality KW - sensitivity KW - punishment KW - dimensions KW - modulation KW - predict Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-131057 VL - 8 IS - 3 ER -