Incentive learning is the process via which animals update changes in the value of rewards. Current evidence suggests that, for food rewards in rats, this learning process involves the amygdala. However, it remains unclear whether this learning undergoes protein synthesis-dependent consolidation and “reconsolidation” processes in the lateral and basal nuclei of amygdala. Accordingly, we examine...

Incentive learning is the process via which animals update changes in the value of rewards. Current evidence suggests that, for food rewards in rats, this learning process involves the amygdala. However, it remains unclear whether this learning undergoes protein synthesis-dependent consolidation and "reconsolidation" processes in the lateral and basal nuclei of amygdala. Accordingly, we examine...

The development of drug-seeking habits is implicated in the transition from recreational drug use to addiction. Using a drug seeking/taking chained schedule of intravenous cocaine self-administration and reward devaluation methods in rats, the present studies examined whether drug seeking that is initially goal-directed becomes habitual after prolonged drug seeking and taking. Devaluation of th...

Recent work (Blundell et al., 2001; Balleine et al., 2003) has suggested that the basolateral region of the amygdala (BLA) is important in the representation of the sensory and incentive aspects of motivationally significant events. In common with other theories of function of the BLA, this predicts that lesions of the BLA will interfere with reinforcer devaluation after appetitive Pavlovian or...

This simple paper models the production allocation choices of a multinational enterprise (MNE) in a three-country framework -a northern country and two southern countries. The products made in the southern countries are of lower quality, and have higher substitutability than those between the south and the north. We investigate how exchange rates affect production, employment, profits and welfa...

This paper presents a small macroeconometric model examining the determinants of Indian trade and inflation to address the effects of a reform policy package similar to those implemented in 1991. This is different from previous studies along one important dimension that we explicitly incorporate the non-stationarity of the data into our model and estimation procedures, which suggest that the st...

Chronic alcohol self-administration leads to alcohol-seeking behavior that is habitual and insensitive to changes in the value of the earned alcohol. Such behavior has been shown to rely on the dorsolateral region of the striatum in rats but the specific pharmacological control of output from this region is not yet understood. In the following experiments rats were trained to self-administer un...

Sign-tracking rats show heightened sensitivity to food- and drug-associated cues, which serve as strong incentives for driving reward seeking. We hypothesized that this enhanced incentive drive is accompanied by an inflexibility when incentive value changes. To examine this we tested rats in Pavlovian outcome devaluation or second-order conditioning prior to the assessment of sign-tracking tend...