Discriminated taste aversion and context: A progress report

The research described here concerns the interaction between the environmen t (context), the organism, and the effects of opiates, focusing on how cond itioning and contextual cues affect drug controlled behaviors. This analysi s applies the powerful tool of drug discrimination to a respondent conditio ning procedure (discriminated taste aversion, DTA). Data show that the use of DTA is feasible in that it is sensitive to morphine dose and saccharin c oncentration. Swifter control over DTA was achieved by increasing the LiCl dose (UCS magnitude). It is also clear that morphine alone can serve as a d iscriminative stimulus not requiring saccharin as a contextual element (whi ch has been the case for most DTA studies to date), or saccharin being part of a compounded stimulus. Pharmacological specificity was demonstrated in substitution tests with delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol. This research continu es a systematic experimental analysis of the interaction between drug-contr olled behavior and context. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.