ANALYSIS OF CONFLICT BEHAVIOR IN THE RAT TO DETECT EARLY COMMUNICATION IN THE AUDITORY SYSTEM

Early communication is observed whenever the evaluation of the stimulus can activate a motor response before evaluation is completed. Approach and avoidance tendencies to the same object constitute a condition of conflict. This paradigm occurs when two components of the stimulus information prime different responses.

Freely moving rats were trained to respond on a two-components auditory stimulus in a simplified labyrinth.

The first component is the pitch of a frequency modulated tone and the second component is the place. Experimental contingencies in a two-choice GO/NOGO task are arranged such that preliminary evaluation should lead to one response, while complete evaluation should lead to the other response. The animals were conditioned to an appetitive stimulus component cueing the GO response with reinforcement by sunflower seeds.

The negative reinforcer presented together with the conditioned aversive stimulus cueing the NOGO response was a flashing light. One group of subjects is trained to discriminate the pitch component disregarding the stimulus location. On the opposite, the other group of rats is trained to discriminate the spatial component of the auditory stimulation. The competing response-relevant dimensions are provided by the same stimulus when binaural stimuli are generated with all combinations of pitch and location choices.