Figure 3
From: A matter of timing: harm reduction in learned helplessness
Distribution densities of failure patterns and latencies of 130 Sprague Dawley rats tested for learned helplessness with (n = 92, black bars) or without prior exposition to inescapable shock (n = 38, grey bars). A: Our LH paradigm uses inescapable shock of relatively low intensity. Consequently, behavioral variation is high and most of the exposed rats do not become helpless. Up to date the number of failures to press the lever out of 15 trials shock has been accepted as the ‘gold standard’ to discriminate a small fraction of helpless rats after inescapable shock. Rats not exposed to inescapable shock have served as a control and determined the cut-off criterion for helplessness to be ≥ 11. B: Distribution of sum of latencies only from trials 8–10 identified the cut-off criterion for helplessness to be ≥ 150 s and yielded a better separation of the helpless fraction among the rats tested after inescapable shock.