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Original Research Article
The influence of amphetamine on sensory and conditioned reinforcement: evidence for the re-selection hypothesis of dopamine function

Department of Psychology, UCLA, USA


In four experiments we assessed the effect of systemic amphetamine on the ability of a stimulus paired with reward and a stimulus that was not paired with reward to support instrumental conditioning; i.e., we trained rats to press two levers, one followed by a stimulus that had been trained in a predictive relationship with a food outcome and the other by a stimulus unpaired with that reward. Here we show, in general accord with predictions from the dopamine re-selection hypothesis [Redgrave and Gurney (2006). Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 7, 967– 975], that systemic amphetamine greatly enhanced the performance of lever press responses that delivered a visual stimulus whether that stimulus had been paired with reward or not. In contrast, amphetamine had no effect on the performance of responses on an inactive lever that had no stimulus consequences. These results support the notion that dopaminergic activity serves to mark or tag actions associated with stimulus change for subsequent selection (or re-selection) and stand against the more specific suggestion that dopaminergic activity is solely related to the prediction of reward.

Keywords: conditioned reinforcement, sensory reinforcement, instrumental conditioning, dopamine

Citation: Winterbauer NE and Balleine BW (2007) The influence of amphetamine on sensory and conditioned reinforcement: evidence for the re-selection hypothesis of dopamine function. Front. Integr. Neurosci. (2007) 1:9. doi:10.3389/neuro.07.009.2007

Received: 08 October 2007; paper pending published: 30 October 2007; accepted: 19 November 2007; published online: 30 November 2007.

Edited by: 
Sidney A. Simon, Duke University, USA

Reviewed by: 
Albino J. Oliveira-Maia, Duke University Medical Center, USA; Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Ivan E. de Araujo, Duke University Medical Center, USA; The John B. Pierce Laboratory, USA
Jennifer R. Stapleton, Duke University, USA

Copyright: © 2007 Winterbauer and Balleine. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.

*Correspondence: Bernard W. Balleine, Department of Psychology, UCLA Box 951563 Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1563, USA balleine@psych.ucla.edu
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