Neural network dynamics underlying flexible animal behaviors remain elusive. The fruit fly "Drosophila" melanogaster is considered an excellent model in behavioral neuroscience because of its simple neuroanatomical architecture and the availability of various genetic methods. Moreover, "Drosophila" larvae's transparent body…

Through four previous editions, students and instructors have relied on this book's clear, concise, and highly accessible overview of the processes and mechanisms responsible for conditioning and learning. Domjan and Delamater summarize major theories of how humans and nonhuman animals learn, along with the classic experiments that support these…

Signaled active avoidance (SigAA) is the key experimental procedure for studying the acquisition of instrumental responses toward conditioned threat cues. Traditional analytic approaches (e.g., general linear model) often obfuscate important individual differences, although individual differences in learned responses characterize both animal and…

When discrete localizable stimuli are used during appetitive Pavlovian conditioning, "sign-tracking" and "goal-tracking" responses emerge. Sign-tracking is observed when conditioned responding is directed toward the CS, whereas goal-tracking manifests as responding directed to the site of expected reward delivery. These…

Pavlovian conditioned approach behavior can be directed as much toward discrete cues as it is toward the environmental contexts in which those cues are encountered. The current experiments characterized a tendency of rats to approach object cues whose prior exposure had been paired with reward (conditioned object preference, COP). To demonstrate…

Development and sex differentiation impart an organizational influence on the neuroanatomy and behavior of mammalian species. Prior studies suggest that brain regions associated with fear motivated defensive behavior undergo a protracted and sex-dependent development. Outside of adult animals, evidence for developmental sex differences in…

Although several studies have examined the subcortical circuitry underlying Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT), the role of medial prefrontal cortex in this behavior is largely unknown. Elucidating the cortical contributions to PIT will be key for understanding how reward-paired cues control behavior in both adaptive and maladaptive context…

Studies investigating the development of memory processes and their neural substrates have flourished over the past two decades. The review by Jabès and Nelson (2015) adds an important piece to our understanding of the maturation of different elements and circuits within the hippocampal system and their association with the progressive development…

Red colobus monkeys are playful primates, making them an important species in which to study animal play. The author examines play behaviors and responses in the species for its play initiation events, age differences in initiating frequency and initiating behavior, and the types of social play that result from specific initiating behaviors. Out…

The effects of cocaine were examined under a titrating-delay matching-to-sample procedure. In this procedure, the delay between sample stimulus offset and comparison stimuli onset adjusts as a function of the subject's performance. Specifically, matches increase the delay and mismatches decrease the delay. Titrated delay values served as the…

Emerging evidence suggests that nicotine may enhance short-term memory. Some of this evidence comes from nonhuman primate research using a procedure called delayed matching-to-sample, wherein the monkey is trained to select a comparison stimulus that matches some physical property of a previously presented sample stimulus. Delays between sample…

Presents Michael J. Meaney as one of the winners of the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions (2012). Michael J. Meaney has taken the phenomenon of "handling" of newborn rats and opened a new area of investigation that has given new meaning to epigenetics via his work demonstrating transgenerational…

When subjects learn to associate two sample durations with two comparison keys, do they learn to associate the keys with the short and long samples (relational hypothesis), or with the specific sample durations (absolute hypothesis)? We exposed 16 pigeons to an ABA design in which phases A and B corresponded to tasks using samples of 1 s and 4 s,…

The hippocampus and dentate gyrus play critical roles in processing declarative memories and spatial information. Dentate granule cells, the first relay in the trisynaptic circuit through the hippocampus, exhibit low spontaneous firing rates even during locomotion. Using intracellular recordings from dentate neurons in awake mice operating a…

Presents a short biography of one of the winners of the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology. The 2012 winner is Friederike Range for outstanding contributions to the understanding of the complex social minds of nonhuman animals. Through ingenious experimental approaches,…