Fig. 1. Timeline of experiments.

Following surgery, animals were trained in the mixed valence Y-maze task first. Following a successful cue acquisition test, animals received intracranial microinfusions of CNO (1 mM, depicted as IC infusion) and were administered a conflict test and locomotor test. After a refresher conditioning session, animals were infused again, and then administered the appetitive and aversive preference tests. Next, animals were given ~5 days of free feeding, and then food restricted for a novelty detection test, novel environment suppressed feeding (NESF) and the familiar environment suppressed feeding test (FESF), prior to which CNO was microinfused. Following these tests, the animals were given free access to food for 24 h, and were then food restricted again prior to the two free feeding tests, which occurred on successive days. Finally, animals received a final infusion of either CNO or saline, were administered the elevated plus maze, and sacrificed thereafter for brain extraction.