Sex-specific exploration accounts for differences in valence learning in male and female mice

Valence, the quality by which something is perceived as good or bad, appetitive or aversive, is a fundamental building block of emotional experience and a primary driver of adaptive behavior. Pavlovian fear and reward learning paradigms are widely used in preclinical research to probe mechanisms of valence learning but with limited consideration of sex as a biological variable despite known sex differences in neuropsychiatric disorders associated with impaired valence. Here, we compare appetitive-only, aversive-only, and mixed-valence cue-outcome Pavlovian conditioning paradigms in male and female mice to dissociate effects of context, valence, and salience in a sex-specific manner. Using a data-driven approach to identify behaviors indicative of valence learning in an unbiased manner, we compare task performance between paradigms in male and female mice. We show that while male and female mice acquire appetitive and aversive associations in both single- and mixed-valence paradigms, sex differences emerge in single-valence paradigms. Ultimately, we show that these apparent sex differences in valence learning are driven by non-specific baseline differences in exploratory behavior. Males explore more at baseline, altering their trajectory of cue-reward association acquisition, whereas females explore less at baseline, increasing shock-facilitated freezing in aversive-only contexts, masking cue discrimination. Overall, our findings illustrate how task design differentially impacts behavioral expression in male and female mice and demonstrate that mixed-valence paradigms afford a more accurate assessment of valence learning in both sexes.