Cross-species investigation into sex differences in the relationship between approach-avoidance conflict resolution and alcohol drinking-related behaviours: A potential role for the ventral hippocampus by Tanner McNamara
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Historically, alcohol use disorder has been thought to reflect aberrant approach behaviour, with minimal consideration of how potential sex differences in approach-avoidance bias in response to conflict could influence drinking behaviour. Emerging hypotheses suggest that key sex differences may underlie distinct relationships between approach-avoidance conflict (AAC) resolution and addiction-like alcohol drinking in males and females, although these have not been directly tested. The current thesis therefore investigated the role of sex in mediating the relationship between AAC resolution and addiction-like drinking in rats and humans, while also probing the function of the ventral hippocampus (vHPC), a region implicated in AAC resolution, in an explicit conflict decision-making task using ethanol as a reward.The first experiment investigated the directionality of the relationship between AAC, assessed on an established mixed-valence Y-maze paradigm, and homecage ethanol self-administration in rats. Though ethanol history did not impact AAC resolution, conflict avoidance was associated with higher levels of ethanol self-administration in females, but not males. The second experiment explored the ability of AAC resolution to predict future addiction-like drinking in rats. While motivational breakpoints for ethanol was unrelated to AAC, different sex by AAC interactions predicted responding for ethanol both in extinction and when punished by footshock: heightened conflict approach in males was associated with reduced extinction responding, but more persistent responding in the face of footshock. The third experiment collected self-report drinking data from university students and assessed AAC resolution on an established computerized rule-based paradigm. Conflict approach gender-dependently related to drinking, with a more positive relationship in males compared to females. In the final study, rats were tested on a novel operant choice task, choosing one drink of ethanol from a safe lever or a double drink of ethanol accompanied by footshock on a conflict lever. Ventral hippocampal inactivation sex-dependently altered choice behaviour, relatively promoting conflict approach in males versus avoidance in females, though projections to the medial prefrontal cortex appeared uninvolved. Together, these findings implicate AAC resolution as a cross-species, sex-dependent correlate of alcohol use. Ventral hippocampal function may underlie differences in both AAC resolution and drinking between males and females.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".