Differential effects of corticotropin-releasing factor and acute stress on different forms of risk/reward decision-making.

Differential effects of corticotropin-releasing factor and acute stress on different forms of risk/reward decision-making. Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2020 Jan 17;:107167 Authors: Bryce CA, Adalbert AJ, Claes MM, van Holstein M, Floresco SB Abstract Acute stress and corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) have been show to perturb cost/benefit decision making involving effort costs. However, previous studies on how stress manipulations affect decisions involving reward uncertainty have yielded variable results. To provide additional insight into this issue, the current study investigated how central CRF infusion and acute restraint stress alter different forms of risk/reward decision-making guided by internal representations of risk/reward contingencies or external informative cues. Male rats were well-trained on one of two tasks that required choice between a small/certain or a large/risky reward. On a probabilistic discounting task, the probability of obtaining the larger reward increased or decreased systematically over blocks of trials (100-6.25%). On a cue-guided Blackjack task, reward probabilities (50% or 12.5%) were signaled by discriminative auditory cues. CRF (1 or 3μg) was infused intracerebroventricularly (ICV) or one-hour of restraint stress was administered prior to behavioral testing. Neither CRF nor acute stress altered risky choice on probabilistic discounting, but did increase trial omissions in the latter part of the sessio...
Source: Neurobiology of Learning and Memory - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Neurobiol Learn Mem Source Type: research