The aims of this project are to determine whether low doses of ethanol administered during Pavlovian training facilitate subsequent Pavlovian conditioned suppression of ongoing instrumental conditioned behavior in rats, and to assess the feasability of using the conditioned suppression procedure to study the facilitatory effect of ethanol on Pavlovian conditioning. Our previous work revealed that very low doses of ethanol can enhance Pavlovian somatic and autonomic conditioning in rabbits, although higher doses suppress conditioning. Moreover, very low doses of ethanol induced state dependent effects on Pavlovian conditioning in rabbits, and mild ethanol intoxication during Pavlovian training delayed disappearance of somatic conditioned responses during subsequent extinction testing following either ethanol or water. These finding are potentially important since they suggest that mild ethanol intoxication can enhance the ability of stimuli to elicit Pavlovian conditioned responses, and impair the ability to adaptively modify these reflex-like responses when environmental contingencies later change. If this facilitatory effect of ethanol also occurs in other species and Pavlovian conditioning situations, it might be related to the etiology of alcoholism and to the causes of alcoholic relapse after rehabilitation. Accordingly, five experiments are proposed to assess 1) whether low doses of ethanol similarly facilitate Pavlovian conditioned suppression in rats and the dose-effect relation for ethanol effects on conditioned suppression; 2) whether a low dose of ethanol induces state-dependent or non-specific effects on Pavlovian conditioned suppression; 3) whether mild ethanol intoxication facilitates appetitive as well as aversive Pavlovian conditioning; 4) the effects of a low dose of ethanol on discriminative Pavlovian conditioning and reversal; and 5) whether low doses of other abused and addictive drugs similarly facilitate Pavlovian conditioned reflexes.
| Hernandez, L L; Valentine, J D (1989) Enhancement of pavlovian conditioned suppression by mild ethanol intoxication. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 97:476-80 |
