An extinction cue reduces appetitive Pavlovian reinstatement in rats

- A cue present during extinction and on a test following unsignalled USs reduces reinstatement.
- The same cue presented only during extinction but not during test does not reduce reinstatement.
- The same cue presented in a neutral learning context and during test does not reduce reinstatement.
- CSs and Extinction Cues (ECs) were counterbalanced as visual and auditory cues.
- These results match findings that ECs can be used to reduce spontaneous recovery and renewal.

A Pavlovian appetitive conditioning preparation with rats was used to assess the effect of an extinction cue on reinstatement after extinction. Reinstatement provides an animal analog to relapses following treatment in humans; it occurs when a conditioned stimulus elicits strong conditioned responding following extinction and presentation of the unconditioned stimulus. An extinction cue is a stimulus presented during extinction of behavior controlled by the conditioned stimulus and is also presented later when the behavior would be expected to return/relapse following extinction (i.e., when reinstatement occurs). An extinction cue has been shown previously to reduce and prevent other instances of relapse analogs (spontaneous recovery and renewal). The authors tested whether an extinction cue would also reduce reinstatement, and included controls for reinstatement and for potential alternative accounts of an extinction cue's effect on reinstatement. The extinction cue reduced reinstatement, but a cue not presented during extinction did not affect reinstatement, bearing on several alternative explanations of the reduction effect. The authors suggest the extinction cue reduces reinstatement by helping to retrieve a memory encoded during extinction, and that reinstatement is due at least in part to a failure to retrieve that extinction memory.