It is well known that animals can learn escape responses when exposed to aversive stimuli. Additionally, it has been described that as effective behaviors to reduce contact with aversive stimuli are developed, the level of arousal decreases. However, the avoidance tasks, typically described, are based on the learning of simple motor patterns that do not allow a detailed description of the process of acquisition and refinement of the escape task. The present study aimed to describe the changes in the performance of animals that received one or two training sessions in the Barnes circular maze and the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis as an indicator of the arousal associated with the learning of escape responses. Our findings showed that extended training results in lower HPA axis activity than standard training as reflected by corticosterone release and paraventricular hypothalamic nucleus activity. This result suggests that the HPA axis functioning may be associated with the predictability and control that animals acquire through the learning of a navigation route that allows them to escape from an aversive situation in spatial tasks.

众所周知，动物在受到厌恶刺激时可以学习逃避反应。另外，已经描述了随着减少与厌恶刺激的接触的有效行为的发展，唤醒水平降低。但是，通常描述的回避任务是基于对简单运动模式的学习而来的，这些运动模式不允许详细描述逃生任务的获取和改进过程。本研究旨在描述在Barnes圆形迷宫中接受一两次训练的动物的性能变化以及下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺（HPA）轴的活动，以此作为与学习有关的觉醒的指标逃避响应。我们的研究结果表明，通过皮质酮释放和脑室下丘脑旁核活动反映出，延长的训练结果比标准训练的HPA轴活动更低。该结果表明，HPA轴功能可能与动物通过学习导航路线而获得的可预测性和控制能力有关，该导航路线使它们能够摆脱空间任务中的反感情况。