Punishment insensitivity emerges from impaired contingency detection, not aversion insensitivity or reward dominance
- University of New South Wales, Australia
Abstract
Our behaviour is shaped by its consequences – we seek rewards and avoid harm. It has been reported that individuals vary markedly in their avoidance of detrimental consequences, i.e. in their sensitivity to punishment. The underpinnings of this variability are poorly understood; they may be driven by differences in aversion sensitivity, motivation for reward, and/or instrumental control. We examined these hypotheses by applying several analysis strategies to the behaviour of rats (n = 48; 18 female) trained in a conditioned punishment task that permitted concurrent assessment of punishment, reward-seeking, and Pavlovian fear. We show that punishment insensitivity is a unique phenotype, unrelated to differences in reward-seeking and Pavlovian fear, and due to a failure of instrumental control. Subjects insensitive to punishment are afraid of aversive events, they are simply unable to change their behaviour to avoid them.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript in Figure 1. Source data files, for all figures, have been provided.
Article and author information
Author details
Philip Jean-Richard-dit-Bressel
Funding
Australian Research Council (DP190100482)
- Gavan P McNally
Australian Research Council (DP170100075)
- Gavan P McNally
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All procedures were approved by the UNSW Animal Ethics Committee (AEC) (ACEC16/160B) and in accordance with the code set out by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) for the treatment of animals in research.
Copyright
© 2019, Jean-Richard-dit-Bressel et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Punishment insensitivity emerges from impaired contingency detection, not aversion insensitivity or reward dominance
eLife 8:e52765.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.52765
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