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Auditory aversive learning increases discrimination thresholds

Nature Neuroscience volume 14, pages 791–796 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

Animal studies of discriminative fear conditioning traditionally use stimuli that are distant in physical features and thus easily distinguished perceptually. Independently, human studies have shown that training mostly improves discrimination thresholds. We found that aversive learning actually induced an increase in discrimination thresholds in humans and that subjective aversion during conditioning predicted the individual threshold change. This counterintuitive performance deterioration occurred when using odors or sounds as aversive reinforcers and was not a result of attentional distraction or decision bias. In contrast, positive reinforcement or mere exposure induced the typically reported decrease in thresholds. Our findings indicate that aversive outcomes induce wider stimulus generalization by modulating perceptual thresholds, suggesting the engagement of low-level mechanisms. We suggest that for risk- or loss-related stimuli, less specificity could be a benefit, as it invokes the same mechanisms that respond quickly and efficiently in the face of danger.

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Figure 1: Aversive tone-odor conditioning increases discrimination thresholds.
Figure 2: Psychometric curves before and after aversive conditioning.
Figure 3: Individual implicit aversiveness predicts change in discrimination thresholds.
Figure 4: Aversive tones also cause increase in thresholds.
Figure 5: Discrimination thresholds persist after 24 h.
Figure 6: The potential contribution of distracted attention and decision bias to the change in discrimination thresholds.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Sagi for discussions. This work was supported by a Minerva Foundation and an Israel Science Foundation Grant to R.P., an Alon and Marie-Curie Fellow.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    Jennifer Resnik, Noam Sobel & Rony Paz

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  1. Jennifer Resnik
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Contributions

R.P. conceived the hypothesis. R.P., N.S. and J.R. designed experiments. J.R. performed the experiments. R.P. and J.R. performed the data analyses and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Rony Paz.

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Resnik, J., Sobel, N. & Paz, R. Auditory aversive learning increases discrimination thresholds. Nat Neurosci 14, 791–796 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2802

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