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| Contact Information: Anthony L. Riley Department of Psychology Psychopharmacology Laboratory American University 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20016-8062 |
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| 202-885-1720 (phone) 202-885-1081 (fax) alriley@american.edu |
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| Kevin B. Freeman 601-815-9203 (phone) Kfreeman@psychiatry.umsmed.edu |
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| The highlight for February is by Dr. Geoffrey Hall from the Department of Psychology at the University of York. For the past five years, this web page has presented a number of interesting and important highlights from a variety of colleagues. Each colleague has highlighted some facet of aversion learning and his/her own specific involvement in the field. These highlights have included assessments of the phenomenon itself (its limits, implications, nature), descriptions of its potential clinical/experimental utility (e.g., drug abuse, basic toxicology, taste psychophysics) and analysis of its use as an analytical tool for general issues in learning and memory (sensory-specific associations, latent inhibition, stimulus generalization and memory function). The various approaches and assessments speak to the breadth of interest in and application of the field. The work by Dr. Hall illustrates that such approaches can be evident with the same experimental preparation and within the same laboratory. As Dr. Hall describes, his work on contextual conditioning in aversions taps all three of the abovementioned general approaches. The general issue addressed in his lab has been contextual control of aversions. In this analysis, he and his colleagues have convincingly shown that stimuli other than taste can clearly gain control of behavior (when aversive US’s are paired with contextual stimuli). Such findings clearly extend the range of stimuli to which aversive control can be established (beyond taste and olfactory cues). Such findings also have clinical importance, in this case to relevance of the establishment of contextual control in the development of anticipatory nausea (as contextual stimuli associated with chemotherapy come to impact such treatment). Dr. Hall extends this clinical relevance by demonstrating that contextual control of aversion learning can be modulated by overshadowing, suggesting a means for the therapeutic attenuation of anticipatory nausea. Finally, Dr. Hall describes a series of clever studies highlighting the use of aversion learning (again via contextual control) as a tool in the analysis of perceptual learning (that may clearly extend beyond taste/place aversion conditioning). Specifically, using the context conditioning preparation he demonstrates that perceptual learning impacts associative control. The work he describes nicely illustrates the breadth of aversion learning and the areas to which it can be applied. It further demonstrates how the phenomenon has developed beyond the classic view as a constraint on learning to a preparation with clinical and experimental value. Click here to see the highlight for Dr. Hall.
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