The effects of aminotriazole and acetaldehyde on an ethanol drug discrimination with a conditioned taste aversion procedure

The present study was designed to investigate whether acetaldehyde shares s timulus properties with ethanol using the conditioned taste aversion (CTA) baseline of drug discrimination learning. Animals were trained to discrimin ate ethanol (0.8 g/kg, i.p.) from saline using 11 consecutive cycles consis ting of a pairing day and three nonpairing days. On pairing days, all anima ls were injected with ethanol 30 min prior to a 20-min limited access to a saccharin solution (0.1% w/v) and then immediately injected with either LiC l (0.15 M, 1.8 meq) or distilled water. On the three following nonpairing d ays, animals were injected with saline and 30 min later presented with the same saccharin solution for 20 min. No injections followed on these nonpair ing days. Results showed that animals acquired discriminative stimulus cont rol for ethanol after seven pairings. Pretreatment with the catalase inhibi tor did not alter the discriminative control for ethanol. Generalization te sts revealed that acetaldehyde substituted for ethanol at a dose of 0.3 g/k g. The results of the present study suggest that catalase inhibition did no t reverse or alter the discriminative stimulus effects of ethanol. However, generalization rests showed that acetaldehyde (0.3 g/kg) will substitute f or ethanol suggesting that these two drugs share some similar properties. ( C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.