Toward understanding ethanol's capacity to be reinforcing: a conditioned place preference following injections of ethanol.
Rats that had previously consumed a 6% ethanol (ETOH) solution daily for 26 days and rats without such a history served as subjects in a test for the ability of ETOH to establish a conditioned place preference. The time of putative conditioning was from 4 to 8 min after injections of ETOH, 1 g/kg. The combination of programming the period of putative conditioning to be shortly after injections and using rats habituated to drinking ETOH allowed a conditioned place preference to emerge after only a few conditioning trials. Such a result potentially reveals features of the way ETOH achieves its reinforcing capability and sets the stage for understanding the mechanism of that reinforcement.
D000818:Animals; D003216:Conditioning, Operant / Q000187:drug effects*; D000431:Ethanol / Q000494:pharmacology*; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology
D000431:Ethanol