Extinction

Extinction

Overview

The Extinction program log pokes without delivering pellets or cues. Animals may continue to perform operant responses (left or right pokes), but these no longer result in reinforcement.

Theory

In operant conditioning, extinction occurs when a previously reinforced behavior is no longer followed by reinforcement. Although the behavior may persist for some time, responding typically decreases as the animal learns that the contingency has changed. This schedule allows experimenters to quantify how quickly responding declines.

Code

/*
  Feeding experimentation device 3 (FED3)
  Extinction
  alexxai@wustl.edu
  December, 2020

  This project is released under the terms of the Creative Commons - Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0 license:
  human readable: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
  legal wording: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode
  Copyright (c) 2020 Lex Kravitz
*/

#include <FED3.h>                                       //Include the FED3 library 
String sketch = "Ext";                                  //Unique identifier text for each sketch
FED3 fed3 (sketch);                                     //Start the FED3 object

void setup() {
  fed3.begin();                                         //Setup the FED3 hardware
}

void loop() {
  fed3.run();                                           //Call fed.run at least once per loop
  if (fed3.Left) {                                      //If left poke is triggered
    fed3.logLeftPoke();                                 //Log left poke
  }

  if (fed3.Right) {                                     //If right poke is triggered
    fed3.logRightPoke();                                //Log right poke
  }
}

References

Rescorla, R. A., & Wagner, A. R. (1972). A theory of Pavlovian conditioning. In Classical Conditioning II (pp. 64–99). Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Myers, K. M., & Davis, M. (2002). Behavioral and neural analysis of extinction. Neuron, 36(4), 567–584.