A01 A02 A03 A04 A05 A06 A07 A09 A10 A11 A12 A13 A14 A18 A19 A21 F01 F02 INF

A01 – Extinction Learning in the 4th Dimension

Onur Güntürkün, Roland Pusch

This project aims to understand neural fundaments of extinction of appetitive conditioning in pigeons in a design that permits to analyze neural events governing acquisition, context dependent extinction and renewal along the full time frame (the 4th dimension). We combine single cell recordings, fMRI and optogenetic methods in awake pigeons to analyze key events as well as causal interactions between brain areas of the extinction network (NCL, NFL, arcopallium, hippocampus) at the cellular and at the overall systems level. By studying a different animal model we aim to discover variant as well as invariant properties of extinction learning in terms of behavior and neurobiology.

Guiding questions of A01:

  • Does extinction learning change the neural representation of conditioned stimuli (CS) in the “prefrontal” NCL, the motor  arcopallium, the visual NFL, and the hippocampus in context-specific ways?
  • How is the CS-representation in visual NFL and the hippocampus modulated by the the “prefrontal”  NCL during extinction learning and renewal?
  • Which forebrain areas beyond these four structures participate in appetitive extinction and renewal and what is their sequence of activation during a discrimination-extinction-renewal-cycle?
Back to overview

Onur Güntürkün

Projektleiter A01, F01, Z, Ö

Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Roland Pusch

Projektleiter A01

Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Mina Khodadadi

Postdoc A01

Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Robert Reichert

Doktorand A01

Ruhr-Universität Bochum

10 project-relevant publications

Behroozi M, Helluy X, Ströckens F, Gao M, Pusch R, Tabrik S, Tegenthoff M, Otto T, Axmacher N, Kumsta R, Moser D, Genç E, Güntürkün O (2020) Event-related functional MRI of awake behaving pigeons at 7T. Nat Commun. 11: 4715.

Von Eugen K, Tabrik S, Güntürkün O, Ströckens F (2020) Comparative analysis of the dopaminergic innervation of the executive caudal nidopallium in pigeon, chicken, zebra finch and carrion crow, J Comp Neurol. 528: 2929– 2955.

Gao M, Lengersdorf D, Stüttgen MC, Güntürkün O (2019a) Transient inactivation of the visual-associative nidopallium frontolaterale (NFL) impairs extinction learning and context encoding in pigeons. Neurobiol Learn Mem. 58: 50–59.

Gao M, Pusch R, Güntürkün O (2019b) Blocking NMDA-receptors in the pigeon’s medial striatum impairs extinction acquisition and induces a motoric disinhibition in an appetitive classical conditioning paradigm. Front Behav Neurosci. 13: 153.

Gao M, Lengersdorf D, Stüttgen MC, Güntürkün O (2018) NMDA receptors in the avian amygdala and the premotor arcopallium mediate distinct aspects of appetitive extinction learning. Behav Brain Res. 343: 71–82.

Packheiser J, Güntürkün O, Pusch R (2019) Renewal of extinguished behavior in pigeons (Columba livia) does not require memory consolidation of acquisition or extinction in one-day free-operant appetitive conditioning paradigms. Behav Brain Res. 370: 111947.

Packheiser J, Pusch R, Stein CC, Güntürkün O, Lachnit H, Uengoer M (2020a) How competitive is cue competition? Q J Exp Psychol. 73: 104–114.

Packheiser J, Donoso J, Cheng S, Güntürkün O, Pusch R (2020b) Trial-by-trial dynamics of reward prediction error associated signals during extinction learning and renewal. Prog Neurobiol: 101901.

Rook N, Tuff J, Isparta S, Masseck O, Herlitze S, Güntürkün O, Pusch R (2020) AAV1 is the optimal viral vector for optogenetic experiments in pigeons (Columba livia). Commun Biol.

Stacho M, Herold C, Rook N, Wagner H, Axer M, Amunts K, Güntürkün O (2020) A cortex-like canonical circuit in the avian forebrain. Science. 369 (6511).