RESISTANCE TO PUNISHMENT AND MOTIVATION FOR FOOD SEEKING BEHAVIOR IS INDEPENDENT OF COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY IN MALE AND FEMALE RATS

Addictive behaviors are characterized by two major symptoms: consumption despite negative consequences and excessive motivation for the reward. Addiction appears associated with cognitive deficits that can facilitate the development of addiction and limit the ability of addicted individuals to change their behavior when faced with negative outcomes. In particular, the interactions between addictive behaviors and cognitive flexibility, the ability to change behavior in response to the context to maximize gains and minimize losses, appear a primary target for investigation. In this study, we investigated whether addictive behaviors towards food are associated with deficits in cognitive flexibility in Sprague-Dawley rats. We evaluated cognitive flexibility using an attentional set-shifting task and in the same rats, investigated sensitivity to negative outcomes using a progressive shock strength (PSS) task and motivation for palatable food using a progressive ratio (PR) schedule. We found that lower scores in behavioral flexibility were not associated with either PSS or PR breakpoints and in general, no correlation was observed between resistance to punishment, cognitive flexibility or motivation. Moreover, individual differences in sensitivity to punishment were not associated with trial-level strategies in the set-shifting task, including win-stay and lose-shift behavior. These results suggest that loss of control over food intake measured by resistance to punishment and excessive motivation cannot be explained by generalized deficits in cognitive flexibility. Loss of control over food might involve domain-specific flexibility alterations or other cognitive mechanisms. This dissociation challenges the assumption that cognitive inflexibility universally characterizes maladaptive eating behaviors.