Pavlovian conditioning of social exploration in adult female rats

Social conditioned place preference (SCPP) studies show that the reward value of social interaction is amenable to the laws of associative learning, such that it becomes associated with the physical properties of the context. However, social interaction can be initiated and maintained by a variety of motivations, such as the exploration of a novel conspecific, aggression, mutual grooming and mating-like actions. In order to study whether social...