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Are individual differences in appetitive and defensive motivation related? A psychophysiological examination in two samples.

ABSTRACT: Appetitive and defensive motivation account for a good deal of variance in personality and mental health, but whether individual differences in these systems are correlated or orthogonal has not been conclusively established. Previous investigations have generally relied on self-report and have yielded conflicting results. We therefore assessed the relation between psychophysiological indices of appetitive and defensive motivation during elicitation of these motivational states: specifically, frontal electroencephalogram asymmetry during reward anticipation and startle response during anticipation of predictable or unpredictable threat of shock. Results in a sample of psychopathology-free community members (n=63), an independent sample of undergraduates with a range of internalising symptoms (n=64), and the combination of these samples (n=127) revealed that differences in responding to the two tasks were not significantly correlated. Average coefficients approached zero in all three samples (community: .04, undergraduate: -.01, combined: .06). Implications of these findings for research on normal and abnormal personality are discussed.

SUBMITTER: Sarapas C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3962705 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Are individual differences in appetitive and defensive motivation related? A psychophysiological examination in two samples.

Sarapas Casey C Katz Andrea C AC Nelson Brady D BD Campbell Miranda L ML Bishop Jeffrey R JR Robison-Andrew E Jenna EJ Altman Sarah E SE Gorka Stephanie M SM Shankman Stewart A SA

Cognition & emotion 20131106 4

Appetitive and defensive motivation account for a good deal of variance in personality and mental health, but whether individual differences in these systems are correlated or orthogonal has not been conclusively established. Previous investigations have generally relied on self-report and have yielded conflicting results. We therefore assessed the relation between psychophysiological indices of appetitive and defensive motivation during elicitation of these motivational states: specifically, fr ...[more]

PMID: 24191979

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Project description:Eating depends strongly on learning processes which, in turn, depend on motivation. Conditioned learning, where individuals associate environmental cues with receipt of a reward, forms an important part of hedonic mechanisms; the latter contribute to the development of human overweight and obesity by driving excessive eating in what may become a vicious cycle. Although mice are commonly used to explore the regulation of human appetite, it is not known whether their conditioned learning of food rewards varies as a function of body mass. To address this, groups of adult male mice of differing body weights were tested two appetitive conditioning paradigms (pavlovian and operant) as well as in food retrieval and hedonic preference tests in an attempt to dissect the respective roles of learning/motivation and energy state in the regulation of feeding behavior. We found that (i) the rate of pavlovian conditioning to an appetitive reward develops as an inverse function of body weight; (ii) higher body weight associates with increased latency to collect food reward; and (iii) mice with lower body weights are more motivated to work for a food reward, as compared to animals with higher body weights. Interestingly, as compared to controls, overweight and obese mice consumed smaller amounts of palatable foods (isocaloric milk or sucrose, in either the presence or absence of their respective maintenance diets: standard, low fat-high carbohydrate or high fat-high carbohydrate). Notably, however, all groups adjusted their consumption of the different food types, such that their body weight-corrected daily intake of calories remained constant. Thus, overeating in mice does not reflect a reward deficiency syndrome and, in contrast to humans, mice regulate their caloric intake according to metabolic status rather than to the hedonic properties of a particular food. Together, these observations demonstrate that excess weight masks the capacity for appetitive learning in the mouse.

Project description:We aimed to examine mechanistically the observed foraging differences across two honey bee, Apis mellifera, subspecies using the proboscis extension response assay. Specifically, we compared differences in appetitive reversal learning ability between honey bee subspecies: Apis mellifera caucasica (Pollman), and Apis mellifera syriaca (Skorikov) in a "common garden" apiary. It was hypothesized that specific learning differences could explain previously observed foraging behavior differences of these subspecies: A.m. caucasica switches between different flower color morphs in response to reward variability, and A.m. syriaca does not switch. We suggest that flower constancy allows reduced exposure by minimizing search and handling time, whereas plasticity is important when maximizing harvest in preparation for long winter is at a premium. In the initial or Acquisition phase of the test we examined specifically discrimination learning, where bees were trained to respond to a paired conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus and not to respond to a second conditioned stimulus that is not followed by an unconditioned stimulus. We found no significant differences among the subspecies in the Acquisition phase in appetitive learning. During the second, Reversal phase of the experiment, where flexibility in association was tested, the paired and unpaired conditioned stimuli were reversed. During the Reversal phase A.m. syriaca showed a reduced ability to learn the reverse association in the appetitive learning task. This observation is consistent with the hypothesis that A.m. syriaca foragers cannot change the foraging choice because of lack of flexibility in appetitive associations under changing contingencies. Interestingly, both subspecies continued responding to the previously rewarded conditioned stimulus in the reversal phase. We discuss potential ecological correlates and molecular underpinnings of these differences in learning across the two subspecies. In addition, in a supplemental experiment we demonstrated that these differences in appetitive reversal learning do not occur in other learning contexts.

Dataset Information

Are individual differences in appetitive and defensive motivation related? A psychophysiological examination in two samples.

Publications

Are individual differences in appetitive and defensive motivation related? A psychophysiological examination in two samples.

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