Pain-relief learning in flies, rats, and man: basic research and applied perspectives

By B. Gerber, A. Yarali, Sören Diegelmann, Carsten T. Wotjak, Paul Pauli, M. Fendt. 2014

121 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Memories relating to a painful, negative event are adaptive and can be stored for a lifetime to support preemptive avoidance, escape, or attack behavior. However, under unfavorable circumstances such memories can become overwhelmingly powerful. They may trigger excessively negative psychological states and uncontrollable avoidance of locations, objects, or social interactions. It is therefore obvious that any process to counteract such effects will be of value. In this context, we stress from a basic-research perspective that painful, negative events are “Janus-faced” in the sense that there are actually two aspects about them that are worth remembering: What made them happen and what made them cease. We review published findings from fruit flies, rats, and man showing that both aspects, respectively related to the onset and the offset of the negative event, induce distinct and oppositely valenced memories: Stimuli experienced before an electric shock acquire negative valence as they signal upcoming punishment, whereas stimuli experienced after an electric shock acquire positive valence because of their association with the relieving cessation of pain. We discuss how memories for such punishment- and relief-learning are organized, how this organization fits into the threat-imminence model of defensive behavior, and what perspectives these considerations offer for applied psychology in the context of trauma, panic, and nonsuicidal self-injury.

Subfields: Behavioral Neuroscience, Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Social Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

Dopaminergic neurons write and update memories with cell-type-specific rules (2016, methodology): “Previously we described the anatomy of the adult MB and defined 20 types of dopaminergic neurons (DANs) that each innervate distinct MB compartments (Aso et al., 2014a, 2014b).”
Dopamine activity in projection neurons regulates short‐lasting olfactory approach memory in Drosophila (2022, background): “…studies of associative learning, both through paired and through unpaired presentations of reinforcers, have been conducted (Barth et al., 2014; Gerber et al., 2014; Jacob & Waddell, 2020; Niewalda et al., 2011; Paisios et al., 2017; Saumweber et al., 2011; Schleyer et al., 2015, 2018;…”
Distinct dopamine receptor pathways underlie the temporal sensitivity of associative learning (2019, background): “Behavioral experiments in diverse species, from flies to humans, indicate that animals can form opposing associations with a sensory stimulus depending on its timing relative to a reinforcement cue (Gerber et al., 2014).”
Defining and assessing animal pain (2014, unknown): “Therefore, in the context of fear and predation pain is the imperative.”
Why Do People Hurt Themselves? A New Conceptual Model of Nonsuicidal Self-Injury (2018, background): “1) may explain this pattern (Bastian et al., 2014; Gerber et al., 2014).”
The Drosophila Mushroom Body: From Architecture to Algorithm in a Learning Circuit. (2020, background): “Calcium influx from olfactory input and G protein signaling initiated by dopamine receptors were proposed to combine synergistically to activate cAMP production,which leads to plasticity (Gervasi et al. 2010, Tomchik & Davis 2009).”