THE PARADOXICAL HEDONIC VALENCE OF ACUTE ETHANOL WITHDRAWAL (HANGOVER) STATES IN RATS - PLACE AND TASTE CONDITIONING

The hedonic valence of EtOH's delayed effects, usually referred to as ''hangover,'' was assessed Is h after a 4 g/kg injection using both pl ace and taste learning tasks. In the place conditioning task two CS-,C S+ intervals were used (48 h and 144 h); within each treatment interva l, experimentally induced ''hangover'' was paired with the initially n onpreferred conditioning compartment for half of the experimental grou p (N = 10 rats) and with the initially preferred conditioning compartm ent for the half (N = 10 rats). Saline injections were paired with pla cement in the alternate conditioning compartment. A third group (N = 1 0 rats) was conditioned with milliliter equivalent volumes of saline o n both sides. A conditioned place preference was conditioned with the hangover state-induced interoceptive stimuli. Attempts were made to ta ste condition 24 rats with the interoceptive stimulus attributes of ha ngover. Experimentally induced hangover was associated with an adipsog enic state, defined as a significant decline in voluntary intake of bo th saccharin and water, which prevented taste conditioning. (C) 1997 E lsevier Science Inc.