The experiments in this thesis evaluated the proposal that GluR-1"7" mice display impairments in affective and motivational processes (Mead & Stephens, 2003a). The introductory experiments examined sensorimotor and affective aspects of behaviour in GluR-l"A and wild-type control mice (Chapter 2). These studies attempted to evaluate any performance-based behavioural impairment which may have interfered with learning. Chapter 3 assessed BLA-dependent learning on a Pavlovian fear conditioning paradigm (e.g., LeDoux, Sakaguchi & Reis, 1986). The simple nature of this learning task, and the large body of evidence implicating the amygdala in this form of learning provided an opportunity to examine the influence of the GluR-1 mutation on emotional learning (Maren, 2000a Cardinal et al., 2002). Chapters 4 and 5 made use of separate Pavlovian and instrumental preparations which characterised different affective and sensory-specific associatively activated outcome representations (Blundell, Hall & Killcross, 2001 Balleine, Dickinson & Killcross, 2003 Corbit & Balleine, 2005). The results are discussed in respect to a failure of GluR-1"7" mice to attribute affective and motivational incentive value to the sensory-specific properties of a US an account which furthers that proposed by Mead and Stephens.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:583771 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Johnson, Alexander |
| Publisher | Cardiff University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://orca.cf.ac.uk/54293/ |
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