Presentation Date: Feb 14, 2026
AGSA Abstract
Neural circuits involving the mesocorticolimbic pathway and cognitive centers are relevant to novelty detection, context discrimination, and valence weight assignment. These neural circuits underscore the integration of sensory and cognitive systems to tune adaptive behavioral responses. The underlying cognitive processes are also central to the learning, memory, and recall processes that underscore decision-making. Therefore, to assess mesocorticolimbic (reward), hippocampal spatial, and cortical executive decision processes, a properly formulated CPP test can be used to detect reward-driven efforts, spatial exploration propensity, and decision/decision change phenotypes. Furthermore, the use of sucrose or food reward in the modified CPP tasks can elucidate the ethological relevance of target neural circuits in normal foraging behavior. The current study explores a modified conditioned place preference test to ascertain the sensitivity of a biased paradigm in learning progression and detecting decision change when absolute (0:16) or magnitude (1:10) conditioning systems were used. Our results showed that female mice were more sensitive to both absolute and magnitude CPP factors. Furthermore, male mice were more responsive and robustly discriminated between contexts associated with the magnitude factors compared to the absolute CPP factors. These results suggest that absolute or magnitude CPP modalities can detect decision change when assessed in a biased format. However, the magnitude factor CPP read out behavioral expression more strongly than the absolute factor CPP.
