Affective Module

The affective/motivational tests in this module are widely used in behavioral assessments of rodents. Emotional and motivational states can also powerfully influence behavior by modulating processes such as learning and memory. The appetitive and aversive tasks in this module are designed to assess the impact of motivational and emotional functions on associative learning and cognitive processes. The procedures in the appetitive segment of the module are aimed at evaluating how cues associated with rewarding events, such as food for a hungry animal, are adaptively used to guide behavior. Many of those procedures can be adapted to use other rewards, such as pharmacological agents (e.g. drugs of abuse). Tasks in the aversive segment are designed to measure behavioral responses and other physiological affective reactions to aversive cues, such as learned fear.