Abstract
Two experiments were conducted with Sprague-Dawley rats, chronically implanted with medial septal stimulating and subicular recording electrodes, to test the hypothesis that low-frequency electrical stimulation of the septal area, driving the hippocampal theta rhythm, has frequency-dependent proactive efects on behavior: specifically, that theta-driving stimulation at 7.5 Hz gives rise to tolerance for subsequent frustrative nonreward, whereas stimulation at 7.7 Hz sensitizes the animal to this event. After a 10-day stimulation regime (fifteen 6-sec stimulation trains at a 30-sec intertrain interval daily; 7.5 Hz in Experiment 1, 7.7 Hz in Experiment 2), rats were trained to run in a straight alley for food reward at 1 trial/day for 16 days on either a continuous reinforcement (CRF) or a partial reinforcement (PRF) reinforcement schedule followed by extinction; implanted controls were not stimulated but were otherwise treated identically. As predicted by the hypothesis, the partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE; i.e., greater resistance to extinction after PRF than after CRF training) was proactively reduced by 7.5-Hz stimulation, owing to lowered resistance to extinction in the stimulated PRF-trained animals relative to their nonstimulated controls; whereas, again as predicted, the PREE was increased by 7.7-Hz stimulation, owing both to increased resistance to extinction in the stimulated PRF condition and reduced resistance to extinction in the stimulated CRF condition relative to the respective non-stimulated control groups. Thus the proactive behavioral effects of 7.5- and 7.7-Hz stimulation were opposite in sign, dependent in both cases upon the schedule of reinforcement encountered subsequent to stimulation, and consistent, respectively, with stimulation-induced tolerance for nonreward (7.5 Hz) or sensitization of the response to nonreward (7.7 Hz).
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M.S. was supported by a Science and Engineering Research Council Studentship; G.G., by the Royal Society.
An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/BF03331965.
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Snape, M., Grigoryan, G., Sinden, J.D. et al. Dependence of the proactive behavioral effects of theta-driving septal stimulation on stimulation frequency and behavioral experience: 2. Continuously and partially reinforced running. Psychobiology 24, 22–32 (1996). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03331949
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03331949