Tezos

Dreams of food

Creator

tz1dgTzMtk8gip5AhQq95mvcUthnw4GKoozn

Description

This is another experiment studying whether rats can imagine events that they expect to be there, but that they cannot see. Rats first learned to look for food in a food port whenever a cue was turned on (a sound or a light). Then, we extinguished the cue, that is, we presented the cue without giving them food. We covered the food port for some rats (upper right) but not others (upper left). Thus, the rats with the uncovered port could tell there was no more food, while covering the food port should make the rats uncertain as to whether food was being delivered and they just couldn't reach it because of the cover, or if food was no longer being delivered. After extinction, we opened the food port for all rats and presented the cue on a number of extinction test trials. By covering the food port during extinction, rats in Group Ext-Cover showed less extinction on the first test trial, that is they spent more time during the cue (CS) than in the absence of the cue (PreCS) looking for food. The rats that had the cue extinguished with the food port uncovered (Group Ext-NoCover) showed stronger effects of that extinction during the test. Also, rats in Group Ext-Cover persisted for longer across the test trials in looking for food compared to rats in Group Ext-NoCover. These results show that rats in Group Ext-Cover had imagined the food was still present during extinction, and that they were prevented from retrieving the food by the metal cover.

Token

Contract: KT1MRh...M3uy
Token ID: 5

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