Influence of conspecific and predatory Stressors and their associated odors on defensive burying and freezing responses

In Experiment 1, male rats were exposed to either aggressive (i.e., alpha) or nonaggressive conspecific colonies and tested 24 h later, with or without alpha odors, for freezing behavior and burying of a wall prod that had been the source of a brief electric shock. The results indicated that prior defeat experience and the presence of alpha odors alone during testing had no significant effects, but the combination of prior defeat and alpha-odor testing significantly decreased burying and increased freezing behavior. In Experiment 2, we examined the effects of noncontact exposure to a cat, as a predatory Stressor, during subsequent prod-shock tests involving the presence or absence of cat odors. Exposure to a cat failed to disrupt later prod burying and did not produce freezing. However, the presence of cat odors during testing significantly reduced the amount of defensive burying,without resulting in an increment in freezing. In Experiment 3, rats were given 1, 5, or 30 inescapable preshocks in the presence of either cat odors or a hedonically neutral citronella odor and were tested 24 h later for prod burying and freezing with or without these odors. Both the cat and the citronella odors resulted in a significant reduction in burying and an increase in freezing for rats given 5 and 30 preshocks and tested in the presence of these respective conditioned odors. For the groups that were given 5 preshocks, preshock and later testing in the presence of cat odors resulted in significantly less prod burying and more freezing than for rats that were preshocked and tested in the presence of citronella. The findings of these three ethoexperimental studies are discussed in terms of the learned-helplessness theory, the stress-coping-fear-defense (SCFD) theory, and the concept of selective CS-US associability.     

Postshock learning and conditioned defensive burying

Natural sources of aversive stimuli are frequently well-defined material objects that are present both before and after the aversive event. In the present experiment, rats acquired information about such a source after the aversive event and used this information to guide their subsequent defensive reactions to it. The rats were shocked by one of two possible sources, either a black or a striped prod, mounted on opposite end walls of the test chamber. Immediately following the shock, the houselights were momentarily extinguished and the patterns on the two prods were automatically switched for subjects in the experimental condition or left unchanged for subjects in the control condition. The rats were left in the chamber for another 5 min with the patterns in their new positions before being removed for 2 min while the two prods were mounted on the side walls. During the ensuing test of conditioned defensive burying, the rats in the control condition directed the majority of their burying behavior at the prod exhibiting the pattern displayed by the shock source prior to and during the shock administration. In contrast, the rats in the experimental group buried the prod exhibiting the pattern displayed by the shock source during the postshock period more than they did the prod displaying the pattern present on the shock source prior to and during the shock administration.     

Influence of shock controllability by dominant rats on subsequent attack and defensive behaviors toward colony intruders

Thirty colonies, each consisting of a female and two male adult albino rats, remained intact for an 8-week period. Naive conspecific intruders were then introduced into each colony for a 10-min test for 5 consecutive days. Videotapes of the tests were scored for aggressive and defensive behaviors. In every colony, aggression was greatest for a single alpha male. The alpha rats were randomly given one of three treatments: wheel-turn escape training, inescapable yoked shock, or restraint without shock. The alpha rats were then returned to their colonies and an intruder test was given 26 h later. Significant decreases in aggressive responses and increases in defensive behaviors occurred in the alpha yoked group but not in the other alpha groups. The nonalpha colony partners of the alpha yoked rats showed the opposite changes following the treatment. A final intruder test 72 h later revealed that the deficits in aggression of the alpha yoked group were still present but that the behaviors of most of the other groups were beginning to return to their respective pretreatment levels. These findings were discussed in terms of the concept of learned helplessness and alternative theoretical explanations.     

Behavioral field analysis in two strains of rats in a conditioned defensive burying paradigm

Two strains of rats (albino Wistar and hooded PVG/c) were exposed to a conditioned defensive burying paradigm that consisted of placing rats in a test chamber with bedding material on the floor, shocking them with a shock prod, and recording the time each rat spent in burying responses toward the prod. Various behaviors other than burying (freezing, grooming/paw licking) were observed by a time-sampling procedure during the control, conditioning, and extinction sessions, each of which was 15 min in duration. Wistar rats generally showed behavioral inhibition, as evidenced by less burying, lower exploratory and ambulatory behavior, and higher freezing behavior. PVG/c rats spent significantly more time engaged in burying and accumulated more bedding material in the conditioning session than did the Wistar rats. No significant differences between the two strains of rats were observed during the extinction session in terms of these measurements. The results indicate that Wistar rats have a greater tendency to freeze when coping with the noxious stimulus in a conditioned defensive burying paradigm, whereas the dominant coping style for PVG/c rats is defensive burying.     

Conditioned defensive burying in rats: Availability of burying materials

Rats shocked once by a stationary, wire-wrapped prod mounted on the wall of the test chamber incorporated sand, wooden blocks, or commercial bedding material on the floor of the chamber into a defensive response. They moved the available material toward and over the shock prod in all three conditions, adapting the response topography to the particular demands of the available material. In the sand and bedding conditions, the rats buried the prod by pushing and spraying piles of the material with snout and forepaws, whereas, in the blocks condition they picked up the blocks with their teeth and placed them individually around the prod. In Experiment 2, the rats buried the shock prod with blocks even when they had to first carry the blocks to the prod from the back of the chamber. Thus, conditioned defensive burying is not a simple, reflexive response to objects paired with a painful stimulus: it is a complex behavioral sequence that can vary as a function of the availability of burying materials.     

Influence of postpartum shock controllability on subsequent maternal behavior in rats

Responses of mother rats were observed 24 h before and 24 and 72 h after exposure to one of three 8-day postpartum treatments: shock escape training, yoked inescapable shock, or restrained with no shock. In contrast to those in the other two groups, the dams given inescapable shock showed slower speed to approach the nest, shorter durations of being on the nest, and lower frequency and shorter total duration of oral contact with their pups. These dams also retrieved their pups less frequently, but this measure, as well as the frequency of leaving the nest, did not result in significant differences between groups. Since the traditional interpretations of the learned-helplessness effect were not entirely able to account for these findings, the observed uncontrollable-stress-produced changes in maternal behavior were examined from an ethological perspective.     

Approach and escape to conspecific odors of reward and nonreward in rats

A three-compartment box was used, and a reward odor, or nonreward (extinction) odor, produced by another rat, was present in the middle compartment. Two control odor procedures were also used. The results showed that rats will approach a location in which another rat has previously been given reward more rapidly than they will escape from that location, but showed the opposite effect when the odor was produced by a rat undergoing extinction. The mere presence of an odor associated with another rat had the effect of producing much slower locomotion as compared to a no-odor control condition.     

Prolonged exposure to conspecific and predator odors reduces fear reactions to these odors during subsequent prod-shock tests

In Experiment 1, four groups of male rats were given a session as an intruder in either aggressive (i.e., alpha) or nonaggressive colonies of conspecifics and later received either a 2-h exposure to the odors of the alpha colonies or an exposure-control session with the odors of a nonalpha colony. Two additional groups of rats that had been attacked and defeated by alpha residents were later given a 12-h exposure session with alpha-colony odors or nonaipha-control odors. Twenty-four h after the colony-intruder session, all subjects were given a single 6.5-mA shock from a prod with alpha-colony odors present in the bedding of the test chamber. Attacked rats that had been given exposure-control sessions showed significantly less prod burying and greater freezing than nondefeated subjects. This implies that the alpha-colony odors elicited conditioned fear. In contrast, the attacked subjects that had been given a pretest exposure session with alpha-colony odors showed significantly more prod burying and significantly less freezing. This suggests that the alpha-odor exposure resulted in the extinction of fear to these odors. Furthermore, the 12-h exposure to alpha-colony odors was found to be more effective in reducing fear-mediated responses than was the 2-h exposure. In Experiment 2, three groups of rats were exposed to a cat while they were in a protective cage; later they were given a 12-h exposure session with cat odors, a 12-h exposure-control session with no cat odors, or no exposure treatment. Compared with the two control groups, the subjects that were exposed to cat odors showed less freezing during subsequent prod-shock tests in the presence of cat odors, but they did not show prod burying. The reported changes in fear-mediated reactions to the odors of conspecifics and a predator are discussed in terms of both associative and nonassociative processes.     

The role of spatial and temporal contiguity in defensive burying in rats

The degree of spatial and temporal contiguity between contact with a prod and shock was varied in three experiments to see how these factors contribute to defensive burying. In Experiment 1, rats shocked once through a grid floor while touching a prod buried the prod just as much as did rats shocked through the prod. Experiment 2 showed that rats either shocked through the floor more than 1 min after touching the prod or shocked in the absence of a prod did not bury the prod. Thus, close temporal contiguity between grid shock and prod contact appears necessary for burying. Nevertheless, grid-shocked rats do learn something different from prod-shocked rats, since they bury the prod less and the walls more than do prod-shocked rats when the position of the prod is changed in the test chamber (Experiment 3).     

A reexamination of the effects of motivational state on utilization of conspecific odors in the rat

Two previous studies suggested that rats are unable to use conspecifics’ odors when the motivational state of the donor rats is different from their own (Davis et al., 1974; Davis, Prytula, Noble, & Mollenhour, 1976). The effects of motivational conditions on the utilization of such odors were further evaluated in the present study. In Phase 1, test rats were given training either with donors in the same motivational state or with donors in a different state. Differential responses to donors’ odor emissions occurred only when the motivational states of donors and test subjects were the same, thus confirming earlier findings. However, when test subjects’ motivational conditions were changed in Phase 2, discriminations that had been present in Phase 1 were maintained even though the motivational states of these test subjects and their respective donors no longer matched. Thus, any constraint on the rat’s ability to use odors from conspecifics in a different motivational state is not absolute.     

Genotype and environment interactively determine the magnitude,directionality, and abolition of defensive burying in mice

Genotypic and environmental contributions to the defensive burying response were examined by testing four sublines of two inbred strains of mice in test chambers of three different lengths. Burying was found to be dependent on both the particular subline tested and the length of the test chamber employed. For two sublines, specific increases in the length of the test chamber resulted in the complete abolition of defensive burying. A third subline never displayed defensive burying, and the fourth buried in all three chamber-length conditions. Sex differences in burying were never observed. Rather than being viewed as a species-specific defensive reaction, it was proposed that defensive burying should more appropriately be viewed as a genotypically dependent response, the expression of which is contingent on the specific environmental context in which an aversive stimulus is encountered. Apparent conflicts in the defensive-burying literature were reconciled in accordance with this interpretation.     

Effects of stress controllability,immunization, and therapy on the subsequent defeat of colony intruders

Three experiments investigated the influence that various stress-controllability manipulations had on the defensive behaviors of rats when they were subsequently tested as intruders in previously established, aggressive colonies of conspecifics. In Experiment 1, naive subjects that had received a session of 80 shocks in a tube showed an enhanced series of defensive responses and received more bites than did a group of restrained nonshocked rats as colony intruders 24 h later. These two measures were also found to be positively correlated within each group. In Experiment 2, a group that was given 80 yoked inescapable shocks, in contrast to a group that had wheel-turn escape training and a restrained nonshocked control group, displayed more defeat and was bitten more frequently when tested as intruders on the following day. In Experiment 3, 60 trials of wheel-turn escape training were given 4 h prior to (i.e., immunization) or after (i.e., therapy) a session of 60 inescapable tube shocks. During resident-intruder testing 24 h later, both of these groups showed less defeat and received fewer bites than did an inescapably preshocked group but did not differ from a restrained nonshocked control group. These findings clearly indicate that stress controllability alters species-typical defensive responses, and their implications concerning other learned helplessness effects and interpretations are discussed.     

Recovery of conditioned fear by a single postextinction shock: Effect of similarity of shock contexts and of time following extinction

Subjects in six experimental groups (n = 16 each) received one-trial passive avoidance (PA) training in which shock was delivered upon movement from a white wooden floor compartment to a black grid compartment. Then fear was extinguished (30 min) in the black compartment. After either 24 or 168 h, all the groups were treated in a room distinctively different from the training room. At each interval, one group received a shock in an apparatus similar to the conditioning box, another received a shock in a dissimilar apparatus, and another was placed in a neutral box. A PA test trial in the training apparatus indicated reinstatement of extinguished fear in all the groups given a postextinction shock except the 24-h dissimilar group. Control groups revealed that the extinction treatment was effective and that spontaneous recovery was not evident. The results were explained in terms of classical conditioning, stimulus generalization, and the broadening (flattening) of stimulus generalization gradients with time.     

Slow extinction of conditioned responding following exposure to two bouts of massed shock

Extinction of rats’ conditioned defensive freezing responses in a context associated with two bouts of massed shock (3 sec) separated by a long unreinforced interbout interval was slower than that in a context associated with distributed shock (60 sec). Resistance to extinction following two bouts of massed shock depended on the rats’ remaining undisturbed in the conditioning context during the long unreinforced interbout interval. Slow extinction of freezing was attributed to either the summation of temporal conditioning at the early and late session times or the formation of an association between the early and late bouts of shock. Importantly, the effects of the two bouts of massed shock could not be explained by what is known about the reinforcing effectiveness of massed shock.     

One-trial excitatory backward conditioning as assessed by conditioned suppression of licking in rats: Concurrent observations of lick suppression and defensive behaviors

Twenty-eight male albino rats were given a single 4-sec 1-mA electric-grid-shock unconditioned stimulus (US). In the same session they received two 12-sec conditioned stimuli (CSs). One CS (explicitly unpaired) terminated 180 sec before the US began; the other (backward paired) began immediately after the US terminated. The CSs used were a 1000-Hz 85-dB tone and an 84-dB click; their roles were counterbalanced. Over the next 2 days, each CS was presented for 2 min while the rats drank from a water bottle. The backward-paired CS was found to suppress licking more than the explicitly unpaired CS. This suppression was accompanied by an increase in defensive behavior (freezing and freeze/nod) and by a decrease in other activity. The suppression did not seem to be due to a maintained or enhanced CS-orienting response reflex, nor could it be attributed to an adventitiously reinforced interfering operant. The results support the presumption made in previous reports that the lick suppression evoked by a backward CS reflected one-trial backward excitatory fear conditioning.     

Divergence of conditioned eyeblink and conditioned fear in backward Pavlovian training

Two experiments of Pavlovian conditioning with rabbits evaluated the effects of initiating or continuing a conditioned stimulus (CS) after a paraorbital unconditioned stimulus (US). In Experiment 1, backward pairings, in which a CS came on after the US, produced a CS that appeared inhibitory on a measure of eyeblink conditioning but excitatory on a potentiated-startle measure of conditioned fear. In Experiment 2, extending the duration of a CS that came on prior to the US, so that it continued after the US, decreased eyeblink conditioned responses, whereas it increased conditioned fear. The data from the two experiments confirm and extend those of Tait and Saladin (1986), supporting the suppositions of AESOP (Wagner & Brandon, 1989) that conditioned eyeblink and conditioned fear can be dissociated under various temporal relationships between the CS and US.     

螺母牙形及旋合长度对螺栓牙根部应力的影响

为改善螺纹牙不合理的载荷分布,应用有限元方法对螺纹联接进行参数化建模,根据各螺纹牙的受力情况,对螺母螺纹牙的形状进行了改进,即改变螺母螺纹牙厚的设计。仿真结果表明,此方法可使螺栓轴向最大应力值降低5%以上,并有效地改善了应力分布。文中还对旋合长度对螺栓轴向应力分布的影响也进行了研究,为螺母高度的设计提供了参考。     

Transfer of conditioned suppression and conditioned acceleration from instrumental to consummatory baselines

Following training on a variable-interval food reinforcement schedule, rats were exposed to Pavlovian procedures which produced reliable conditioned suppression and conditioned acceleration of the leverpressing (instrumental) baseline. When free food was simultaneously made available in the test cage, all subjects spent the majority of each session “freeloading,” that is, eating food from a dish rather than leverpressing for it. When superimposed upon the freeloading baseline, the conditioned suppression and conditioned acceleration procedures affected the rate of pellet consumption identically in magnitude and direction to their previous effects on leverpressing. These results suggest a motivational mechanism for conditioned suppression and acceleration, rather than one which depends upon spurious punishment of specific response sequences.     

Effects of conspecific odor on rats’ position and behavior in an open field

When rats were tested in a novel open field, half of which had previously been occupied by a conspecific, they tended to enter the predecessor half first and subsequently spent more time in this half. There was proportionally more sniffing of the floor, sniffing of the air, and grooming in the predecessor half compared with the clean one, and proportionally less ambulating, rearing, and sniffing of the wall. Time spent in the predecessor half was unaffected by whether or not the predecessor had been tested under a relatively stressful condition (strong illumination), but rats tested after a “stressed” conspecific ambulated and reared less and showed more inactivity and thigmotaxis. Predecessor influence may be mediated by qualitative and/or quantitative differences in odor associated with urine traces, an influence that could affect results during routine successive open-field testing.     

基于WinCE和GPRS的安防报警系统设计

针对智能家庭设计了一套基于GPRS的嵌入式无线安防报警系统.该系统由ARM9 S3C2410与Window CE控制主机、USB摄像头、GPRS模块、监控传感器和无线传输模块组成.传感器检测到危险情况后,通过无线方式通知控制主机,采用摄像头拍摄现场图像,并利用GPRS模块向外界报警.详细介绍了Window CE操作系统的移植方法、系统底层驱动的编写过程、应用层软件的开发和硬件电路的设计.