Journal
JOURNAL OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR
Volume 103, Issue 1, Pages 33-49Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/jeab.116
Keywords
impulsive choice; delay discounting; alcohol self-administration; sucrose self-administration; open field; lever press; rat
Funding
- National Institutes of Health [1R01DA029605]
- Department of Psychology, Utah State University
- NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DRUG ABUSE [R01DA029608] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
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In a prior study (Stein et al., 2013), we reported that rats pre-exposed to delayed rewards made fewer impulsive choices, but consumed more alcohol (12% wt/vol), than rats pre-exposed to immediate rewards. To understand the mechanisms that produced these findings, we again pre-exposed rats to either delayed (17.5s; n=32) or immediate (n=30) rewards. In posttests, delay-exposed rats made significantly fewer impulsive choices at 15- and 30-s delays to a larger, later food reward than the immediacy-exposed comparison group. Behavior in an open-field test provided little evidence of differential stress exposure between groups. Further, consumption of either 12% alcohol or isocaloric sucrose in subsequent tests did not differ between groups. Because Stein et al. introduced alcohol concentration gradually (3-12%), we speculate that their group differences in 12% alcohol consumption were not determined by alcohol's pharmacological effects, but by another variable (e.g., taste) that was preserved as an artifact from lower concentrations. We conclude that pre-exposure to delayed rewards generalizes beyond the pre-exposure delay; however, this same experimental variable does not robustly influence alcohol consumption.
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