Shell lesions eliminated outcome-specific PIT but spared general PIT, whereas lesions of the core abolished general PIT but spared outcome-specific PIT. Here we report evidence of a double dissociation between general and outcome-specific PIT at the level of the accumbens. Finally, the effects of the three stimuli on performance of the two actions were assessed in extinction. ![]() Separately, the rats were trained to perform two instrumental actions, each of which earned one of the outcomes used in Pavlovian conditioning. Rats received Pavlovian training in which three auditory stimuli each predicted the delivery of a distinct food outcome. In two experiments, we examined the effects of pretraining lesions (Experiment 1) or muscimol-induced inactivation (Experiment 2) of either the core or shell regions of the nucleus accumbens (NAC) on these forms of PIT. Recent evidence suggests that predictive stimuli produce this effect through either the general arousal (general PIT) or the specific predictions (outcome-specific PIT) produced by their association with reward. Tests of Pavlovian–instrumental transfer (PIT) demonstrate that reward-predictive stimuli can exert a powerful motivational influence on the performance of instrumental actions.
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