Animals recognize a taste cue as aversive when it has been associated with post-ingestive malaise; this associative learning is known as conditioned taste aversion (CTA). When an animal consumes a new taste and no negative consequences follow, it becomes recognized as a safe signal, leading to an increase in its consumption in subsequent…

The Barnes maze is a spatial memory task that requires subjects to learn the position of a hole that can be used to escape the brightly lit, open surface of the maze. Two experiments assessed the relative importance of spatial (extra-maze) versus proximal visible cues in solving the maze. In Experiment 1, four groups of mice were trained either…

Extinction of conditioned fear in animals is the explicit model of behavior therapy for human anxiety disorders, including panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Based on previous data indicating that fear extinction in rats is blocked by quinpirole, an agonist of dopamine D2 receptors, we hypothesized…