Articles
Cumulative vs. Acute Dose–Response Procedures Produce Differential BAC and Behavioral Functions for Ethanol

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0091-3057(96)00473-XGet rights and content

Abstract

The discriminative stimulus attributes of ethanol (ETOH) were characterized in rats trained to discriminate between 1.25 g/kg ETOH and saline. The ETOH generalization functions were assessed using both acute and cumulative dosing procedures. The cumulative procedures differed in the individual incremented doses used to generate the functions. Acute dosing procedures produced discriminative functions that were significantly different from cumulative dose–response curves (DRCs). Similar cumulative DRC’s were generated within each cumulative dosing procedure, whereas significant differences were produced between the two dosing incremented procedures. When blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) were quantified, a cumulative testing procedure produced significantly lower BACs than acute testing procedures at every dose above the initial or starting dose. Interestingly, response rate functions did not differ within or between cumulative and acute procedures. These data may suggest that differential ETOH dosing procedures may differentially influence the behavioral choice and BAC functions in rats, and cautions against the use of cumulative procedures to assess shifts in DRCs during chronic treatments without a concomitant assessment of BACs.

Section snippets

Subjects

Twelve male Sprague–Dawley rats weighing 300–325 g were purchased from Sasco Laboratories, Inc. (Omaha, NE). Rats were housed individually in stainless steel suspended cages located in an American Association for Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care-accredited colony room under the direct supervision of the Department of Animal Resources of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. The animal colony room was maintained on a 12-h light-dark cycle (lights on 0530) at 20–22°C, with a

Results

ETOH stimulus control was established in all 12 rats with a mean number of sessions to criterion performance of 58 days (range 41–67 days). The initial multicycle tests of stimulus control by the two training stimuli provided clear evidence that each rat demonstrated differential response patterns that correlated perfectly with differential cycle-dependent injection patterns (data shown in Table 1). In all of these tests, each rat emitted less than 13 responses prior to the first reinforcer

Discussion

We have demonstrated shifts in ETOH discriminative stimulus generalization functions differentially generated by acute injection and cumulative dosing procedures. Tests conducted with the training dose of ETOH (1.25 g/kg) using an acute testing procedure always engendered a group mean percentage of ETOH-appropriate responding that met our training criteria (>90%), whereas both of the cumulative procedures used required a higher cumulative dose of ETOH in order to engender equivalent criterion

Acknowledgements

We express our appreciation to Ms. Lynn Montgomery for her excellent and professional administrative assistance. This project was supported by RO1-AA6351 and RO1-AA8338 to F. A. H. and D. V. G. and T-32-AA07222 to F. A. H.

References (15)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (0)

View full text