APPETITIVE MOTIVATIONAL STATES DIFFER IN THEIR ABILITY TO AUGMENT AVERSIVE FEAR CONDITIONING IN RATS (RATTUS-NORVEGICUS)

The present experiments compared the effects of 2 appetitive motivatio nal states on the acquisition of Pavlovian fear conditioning in rats ( Rattus norvegicus). In Experiment 1, rats were deprived of either wate r or food prior to contextual fear conditioning, which consisted of th e delivery of a single footshock in a novel observation chamber. Condi tional fear to the contextual cues of the conditioning chamber was mea sured by observing freezing behavior. The results revealed that water, but not food, deprivation enhanced conditional freezing to contextual stimuli paired with footshock. Experiment 2 indicated that the differ ent impact of food or water deprivation on the acquisition of conditio nal freezing was not due to differential generalization decrements dur ing extinction testing. Together, these experiments suggest that the m odulation of fear conditioning by deprivation state is specific to cer tain motivational systems.