Ovarian Hormones Mediate Changes in Adaptive Choice and Motivation in Female Rats.

Autor: Yoest KE; Department of Psychology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States.; Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States., Cummings JA; Department of Psychology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States., Becker JB; Department of Psychology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States.; Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience [Front Behav Neurosci] 2019 Nov 12; Vol. 13, pp. 250. Date of Electronic Publication: 2019 Nov 12 (Print Publication: 2019).
DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00250
Abstrakt: In female rodents, sexual receptivity is coordinated with cyclic changes in the release of gonadal hormones. Increases in estradiol (E) and progesterone (P) during proestrus and estrus not only induce ovulation but also modulate behaviors that increase the likelihood that the female will find a mate and reproduce. This includes changes in receptive behaviors, such as lordosis, as well as changes in appetitive or proceptive behaviors, including motivation. Interestingly, the direction of these changes in motivation is dependent on the type of reward that is being pursued. While induction of sexual receptivity by E and P increases motivation for access to a male, motivation for a palatable food reward is decreased. These concurrent changes may facilitate adaptive choice across the estrous cycle; females bias their choice for sex when fertilization is most likely to occur, but for food when copulation is unlikely to result in impregnation. In order to test this hypothesis, we developed a novel paradigm to measure the motivated choice between a palatable food reward and access to a male conspecific. Ovariectomized, hormone primed females were trained to operantly respond for both food and sex on a fixed interval (FI) schedule. After training, unprimed and primed females were tested in a chamber that allows them to choose between food and sex while still requiring responding on the FI schedule for reach reward. From this we can not only determine the impact of hormone priming on female choice for food or sex, but also how this is reflected by changes in motivation for each specific reward, as measured by the average number of responses made during each fixed interval. Induction of sexual receptivity by hormone priming biases choice toward sex over food and this change is accompanied by an increase in motivation for sex but a decrease in motivation for food. This work provides evidence in support of a novel framework for understanding how the release of ovarian hormones over the course of the estrous cycle modulates adaptive behavioral choice in females by directly assessing motivation via operant responding when multiple rewards are available.
(Copyright © 2019 Yoest, Cummings and Becker.)
Databáze: MEDLINE