At the age when I could have transitioned from being a Brownie to a Girl Guide, I decided to hang up my bobble hat, and spend my teenage years on that pressing activity: lolling in front of the TV.
Anticipation of "mealtime" can be observed in a range of behaviours, including wheel running, lever pressing, activity directed at feeders, general cage activity, and drinking, and represents a laboratory analogue of natural foraging behaviours (Mendoza, 2007; Mistlberger, 1994).
While anytime of year is great for visiting, September and October are typically harvest time at the vineyards, leading to tons of fun picking and pressing activities.
After teaching the monkeys to press levers to obtain banana pellets, they hooked them up to intravenous tubes and observed their lever-pressing activity for either a jolt of saline solution or a hit of cocaine.
The WKY/NCrl rats showed as poor sustained attention as the SHR/NCrl rats with just a slight increase in lever-pressing activity (Additional File 3).
It demonstrated that the ability to identify an S-R association could be progressively enhanced under a stable level of lever-pressing activity.
They are the bout initiation rate b t, or rate at which the subject engages in lever-pressing activity; the within-bout response rate w t, or speed at which the lever is activated while engaged; the average bout length L t, which is the mean number of responses in a bout after the response that initiated the bout; and the refractory period δ, or minimum time required to emit a response [ 18- 20].
Similarly, the medium concentration of amphetamine injections into the accumbens core reliably increased lever pressing, but not activity, whereas injection of the highest concentration into the core significantly increased activity, but not lever pressing.
These results show striking dissociations between lever pressing and locomotor activity and suggest that lever pressing is not a byproduct of heightened locomotor activity or "general" arousal.
In particular, the highest dose (3 mg/kg), which decreased lever pressing, markedly increased activity during testing.
Intra-tubercle injections of amphetamine, which significantly increased lever pressing, moderately increased activity at levels comparable with the lowest dose of systemic amphetamine (0.3 mg/kg); these effects were not statistically significant.
