USING SIGNALED BARPRESSING TASKS TO STUDY THE NEURAL SUBSTRATES OF APPETITIVE AND AVERSIVE LEARNING IN RATS - BEHAVIORAL MANIPULATIONS AND CEREBELLAR LESIONS

The development of standard within-subject conditioning tasks for stud ying similarities and differences in the neural substrates of appetiti ve and aversive learning is described. Rats learned to press a bar dur ing a brief tone presentation to receive a food pellet reward (the app etitive task). Using the same tone signal, conditioning chamber, and t rial timing parameters, the same rats were then trained to press the b ar during the tone presentation to avoid a mild footshock (the aversiv e task). As an initial study of the neural substrates of these forms o f learning, the involvement of the cerebellum was assessed. Bilateral lesions of the deep cerebellar nuclei prevented the learning of the av ersive task but had no effect on the learning of the appetitive task.