Optimizing Social Operant Conditioning in Monogamous Prairie Voles

Maker, Makenzie

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Optimizing Social Operant Conditioning in Monogamous Prairie Voles Public Deposited

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/0r9675464

Abstract

Prairie voles are a powerful rodent model organism for studying social bonds due to their unique nature of forming highly selective and lifelong pair bonds. The formation and maintenance of these bonds depends upon an interplay between social motivation and social reward, which are supported by different neural processes. Behaviorally, these processes can be independently studied using social operant conditioning, in which animals learn to execute lever presses or nose pokes, putatively representing motivation, to achieve access to a social reinforcer, putatively representing social reward or reward error. Here, through a series of iterations and task modifications, we refined and optimized social operant conditioning in prairie voles. Key changes included transitioning from levers to nose pokes, experimenting with tones and delays, and testing different types of reinforcers (e.g., food, novel). We also investigated the impact of bonding and partial versus full social access on motivational salience of social stimuli. Ultimately, these changes resulted in a simplified yet robust design in which we are confident that voles can learn, form nose poke-door associations, understand operant contingencies, establish and display preferences, and exhibit reversal learning. Our final paradigm demonstrated that nose pokes are an innate and highly effective operant modality and that sexually naive and, to a lesser degree, bonded animals demonstrate a robust preference for social stimulus over an empty chamber, although this appears to weaken over the course of bonding. We also observed that partial versus full social access influences motivational salience of partner versus novel. We found that voles require at least five days to reversal learn and that while food is initially highly motivating, voles eventually satiate. This version of social operant conditioning in prairie voles, when combined with neuroimaging and other physiological studies, will allow insight into the neuronal mechanisms underlying social motivation and reward in monogamy.

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