Persona: López Tolsa Gómez, Gabriela Eugenia
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López Tolsa Gómez
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Gabriela Eugenia
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Publicación Assessment of the “timing” function of schedule-induced behavior on fixed-interval performance.(American Psychological Association, 2021) López Tolsa Gómez, Gabriela Eugenia; Pellón Suárez de Puga, RicardoIt has been suggested that schedule-induced behaviors allow organisms to adapt better to temporal regularities of the environment. The main goal of the present study was to observe the effect of scheduleinduced drinking (SID) on the performance in fixed-interval (FI) schedules. Rats were exposed to a FI 15-, 30-, or 60-s food reinforcement schedule, and only half of them had access to water in the experimental chamber. Rats with access to water developed SID, which occurred in the first part of the interval, regardless of the FI value, and was followed by an increase in lever pressing rate. There were no substantial differences in the quantitative measures of timing between groups that had or did not have access to water, except for the rats in the FI 15-s group with access to water, who showed longer postreinforcement pauses, possibly attributable to competition between SID and lever pressing. SID did not manifest the scalar property, contrary to lever pressing, but it is proposed that behaviors are displayed serially until the last behavior before the target operant response becomes a discriminative stimulus for that behavior. It is not assumed that the purpose of schedule-induced behaviors is to aid timing, but the development of behavioral patterns might determine the performance of organisms on temporal tasks. Additionally, in some cases competition between responses might exert more control on when the operant behavior occurs than timing. Timing seems to consist in the temporal organization of available behaviors that leads to a specific behavior occurring at a specified time, a single characteristic that typically had come to indicate accurate timing.Publicación The irrelevancy of the inter-trial interval on delay-discounting experiments on an animal model of ADHD(Elsevier, 2021-06-25) SjØberg, Espen .A.; Johansen, Espen Borgå; Ramos Villaverde, Sergio; López Tolsa Gómez, Gabriela Eugenia; Pellón Suárez de Puga, RicardoDelay discounting involves choosing between a small, immediate reward, and a larger but delayed one. As the delay between choice and large reward gets longer, people with ADHD tend to become impulsive faster than controls, indicated by a switch in preference from the large to the smaller reward. Choosing the smaller reward when the larger is considered reward maximizing is labeled impulsive behaviour. It is well documented that increased delays between choice and reward affects choice preference in both humans and other animals. Other variables such as the inter-trial interval or trial length are observed to have an effect on human discounting, but their effect on discounting in other animals is largely assumed rather than tested. In the current experiment, we tested this assumption. One group of rats was exposed to increasing delays between choosing the large reward and receiving it, while another group experienced longer inter-trial intervals that were equal in length to the delays in the other group. This ensured that trial length was controlled for in delay discounting, but that the delay function and inter-trial intervals could be manipulated and measured separately. Results showed that while the delay between choice and reward caused impulsive behaviour in rats, the length of the inter-trial interval (and by extension trial length) had no impact on choice behaviour. A follow-up experiment found this to be the case even if the length of the inter-trial interval was signaled with audio cues. These results suggest that rats, and possibly animals in general, are insensitive to time between trials, and therefore cannot easily represent human counterparts on the task.Publicación Environmental enrichment accelerates the acquisition of schedule-induced drinking in rats(Elsevier, 2023-09-15) Fuentes Verdugo, Esmeralda; López Tolsa Gómez, Gabriela Eugenia; García Pascual, Raquel; Pellón Suárez de Puga, RicardoEnvironmental enrichment (EE) provides an improvement in the housing conditions of experimental animals, such as laboratory rats, with greater physical and social stimulation through toys and company in the home cages. Its use is known to influence performance of experimental protocols, but these effects have not been well determined in the schedule-induced drinking (SID) procedure. The main goal of this study was to investigate the effects of EE on the acquisition of SID in 24 12-week-old male Wistar rats, divided into two groups, a group with EE housed with toys and companions, and a group without enrichment in individual housing conditions without toys (social isolation and no environmental enrichment, INEE). A total of 25 sessions, under a fixed time 30 s food reinforcement schedule and with access to water in the experimental chambers were carried out. Sessions lasted 30 min. The results showed that the EE group developed faster the excessive drinking pattern of SID, and drank to higher levels, than the INEE group. The greater development of SID in the EE group contradicts the view of schedule-induced behavior as linked to stress reduction and better suits with the conception of induction related to positive reinforcement.Publicación Chronic ∆-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol administration delays acquisition of schedule-induced drinking in rats and retains long-lasting effects(Springer, 2021-08-26) Fuentes-Verdugo, Esmeralda; López Tolsa Gómez, Gabriela Eugenia; Pellón Suárez de Puga, Ricardo; Miguens Vázquez, MiguelRationale: Schedule-induced drinking (SID) is a behavioural phenomenon characterized by an excessive and repetitive drinking pattern with a distinctive temporal distribution that has been proposed as a robust and replicable animal model of compulsivity. Despite cannabis currently being the most widely consumed illicit drug, with growing interest in its clinical applications, little is known about the effects of ∆-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on SID. Objectives: The effects of chronic and acute THC administration on SID acquisition, maintenance and extinction were studied, as were the effects of such administrations on the distinctive temporal distribution pattern of SID. Methods: THC (5 mg/kg i.p.), or the corresponding vehicle, was administered to adult Wistar rats for 14 days in a row. Subsequently, THC effects on SID acquisition were tested during 21 sessions using a 1h fixed-time 60-s food delivery schedule. Acute effects of THC were also evaluated after SID development. Finally, two extinction sessions were conducted to assess behavioural persistence. Results: The results showed that previous chronic THC treatment delayed SID acquisition and altered the distinctive behavioural temporal distribution pattern during sessions. Moreover, acute THC administration after SID development decreased SID performance in animals chronically pre-treated with the drug. No great persistence effects were observed during extinction in animals pre-treated with THC. Conclusions: These results suggest that chronic THC affects SID development, confirming that it can disrupt learning, possibly causing alterations in time estimation, and also leads to animals being sensitized when they are re-exposed to the drug after long periods without drug exposure.Publicación Activity-based anorexia alters hypothalamic POMC and orexin populations in male rats(Elsevier, 2022-08-11) Pinos, Helena; Sánchez Serrano, Ricardo; Carrillo Urbano, Beatriz; Fernández García, José Manuel; García Úbeda, Rocío; Paz Regidor, Ana María de; López Tolsa Gómez, Gabriela Eugenia; Vidal García, Pedro; Gutiérrez Ferre, Valeria; Pellón Suárez de Puga, Ricardo; Collado Guirao, PalomaThe objective of this study was to investigate the orexin and POMC populations in the hypothalamic nuclei of male Wistar rats after the activity-based anorexia (ABA) procedure. Four groups were established based on food restriction and activity: activity (A), ABA, diet (D) and control (C). The ABA protocol consisted of free access to a running wheel for a period of 22 h and access to food for 1 h. When the animals in the ABA group reached the ABA criterion, were sacrificed, and their brains were collected and serially sectioned. The free-floating sections were processed for orexin and POMC immunostaining. The number of orexin A-ir cells in the perifornical-dorsomedial-hypothalamus continuum (PFD) and lateral hypothalamus (LH) and the number of POMC-ir cells in the arcuate nucleus (Arc) were estimated. Data on food intake, body weight and wheel turns were also analyzed. The ABA procedure caused a significant decrease in body weight along with a significant increase in activity. Moreover, at the end of the ABA procedure, the number of POMC-ir cells decreased in the Arc in the A group, and significantly more in the ABA group, and the number of orexin A-ir positive cells decreased in the LH in D and ABA groups. The differential decrease in POMC in the ABA group emphasizes the importance of the melanocortin system in the maintenance of ABA, but more research is needed to elucidate the involvement of this peptide in the mechanism that promotes and maintains anorexia nervosa and how increased activity may interact with all these processes.