Specific Pavlovian to Instrumental Transfer (PIT) is a well-established psychological phenomenon where a specific cue is associated with a particular reward, thus enhancing the likelihood that the trained organism will direct its behavior toward achieving the same reward. PIT demonstrates how environmental cues can influence decision-making and behavior, even when there is no direct connection between the cue and the instrumental action. Real-world examples where PIT has helped to provide insight into various aspects of behavior include research on addiction, consumer behavior, and certain mental disorders. Over time, these cue-reward pairings with PIT result in the strengthening of memories for the specific cue and reward. Further understanding the neural processes involved in cue-reward memory will provide insight into how we form associations between environmental stimuli and positive outcomes. The classic PIT paradigm has rodents press a button when a visual cue they are tracking reaches a specific target. In this experiment, the task has been modified to include sound and lighting cues rather than specific visual content. We aim to explore the underlying neural processes of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and secondary motor cortex (M2). Both regions play a role in structural plasticity when rule learning occurs[Johnson et al., 2016]. We hypothesized that cue-evoked reward memory fosters bias rule selection due to the OFC and M2 pathways. Our methods include altering the PIT paradigm for rodents using delayed nonmatching to sample as well as chemogenetic silencing to see how this passageway dictates the thinking actions in rodents.

Much research has been done on the effects of time-on-task (i.e., decrements in the ability to maintain focus of attention and remain alert to stimuli over prolonged periods of time), circadian phase, sleep homeostatic drive and sleep inertia on vigilance performance; but little isknown about how these processes interact and their influence on measured vigilance performance. Methods/Results To develop a clearer understanding of these possible interactions, 6 healthy adults (1 female) aged 26.8 ± 5.2 y (Mean ± SD) underwent a 28-h forced desynchrony (FD) protocol. Participants completed a 20-min Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) at scheduled awakening and every 2h thereafter until scheduled bedtime. Core body temperature was continuously measured to assess endogenous circadian phase. The reciprocal mean reaction time and lapses in attention (>500msec) were analyzed with mixed-model ANOVA with 2-min bins for time-on-task, 60° circadian bins for circadian phase, and 2h bins for time awake. Significant effects of circadian phase and hours awake—a measure of homeostatic sleep pressure—on the time-on-task were observed (p <0.05), yet there was no time-on-task effect during sleep inertia. Effects of time- on-task were largest at 18 hours awake and near 60 circadian degrees. Conclusion Findings of circadian and sleep homeostatic impacts on time-on-task performance may help inform decisions about timing of countermeasure interventions for improving performance of shift workers and populations operating at night and under sustained operations.