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Early handling influences on behavioral and physiological responses during active avoidance
Author(s) -
Weinberg Joanne,
Levine Seymour
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.420100209
Subject(s) - corticosterone , avoidance learning , avoidance response , psychology , unconditioned stimulus , developmental psychology , classical conditioning , medicine , endocrinology , conditioning , hormone , neuroscience , statistics , mathematics
The effects of early handling on behavioral and physiological responses of the rat during active avoidance learning were investigated. Handled and nonhandled males and females were run in a 2‐way shuttlebox task with an unconditioned stimulus of either .5 mA or .8 mA. Animals exposed to .8 mA showed a higher corticosterone response, a shorter response latency, and increased defecation. Early handling did not affect performance of the task, however handling did alter the patterns of the plasma corticosterone response over the course of avoidance training. Handled females showed less elevation of plasma corticosterone than nonhandled females, but all females showed a decrease in corticosterone over the course of avoidance learning. All males showed the drop in corticoids if run at .5 mA shock, but only handled males showed this change at .8 mA shock.