Some appetitive procedures for examining associative learning in the mouse: Implications for psychopathology

There are few demonstrations of basic associative learning phenomena using appetitive procedures in mice. This article describes procedures for obtaining four associative learning phenomena in mice, using an appetitive conditioning procedure in which the reinforcer was delivery of a sucrose pellet, and the conditioned response head entry into the food tray. Experiment 1 demonstrated latent inhibition in a within-subjects procedure. Experiment 2 demonstrates both overshadowing and blocking, and Experiment 3 Pavlovian conditioned inhibition, which was evaluated by both summation and retardation tests. These procedures all have potential relevance to current translational research questions. The specific advantages of using appetitive tasks are discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.