Conditioned Antisickness Indirect Evidence From Rats and Direct Evidence From Ferrets That Conditioning Alleviates Drug-Induced Nausea and Emesis

• Published in: Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes Vol. 24; no. 4; pp. 483 - 491
• Main Authors: Davey, Valerie A, Biederman, Gerald B
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Psychological Association 01-10-1998
• Subjects: Animals; Association Learning - drug effects; Aversion Conditioning; Avoidance Learning - drug effects; Conditioning, Classical - drug effects; Drug testing; Emetic Drugs; Emetics; Ferrets; Food Intake; Higher Order Conditioning; Kaolin; Laboratory animals; Lithium; Male; Mammals; Nausea; Nausea - chemically induced; Nausea - psychology; Phenobarbital; Pica - psychology; Rats; Rats, Sprague-Dawley; Rodents; Species Specificity; Taste - drug effects; Taste Perception; Vomiting; Vomiting - chemically induced; Vomiting - psychology
• ISSN: 0097-7403; 2329-8456; 1939-2184; 2329-8464
• DOI: 10.1037/0097-7403.24.4.483

In a direct test of conditioned antisickness (CAS;
B. T. Lett, 1983
) theory, the
authors measured emesis in ferrets and found those with a history of
forward pairings of pentobarbital and lithium to have fewer and
shorter bouts of emesis on test, whether induced by lithium or, in a
subsequent test, by the highly emetogenic anticancer drug cisplatin.
In an indirect test of her CAS theory,
B. T. Lett (1992)
paired interoceptive (drug)
or place cues with lithium chloride toxicosis and found that rats
with a forward-pairings history ate less food than controls on a
forward-pairing test, consistent with conditioned sickness rather
than CAS. But rats eat dirt or clay in response to sickness and
adaptively eat small amounts of food when clay is not available. We
substituted clay (kaolin) for food in a partial procedural
replication of
B. T. Lett's
(1992
, Experiment 1) experiment and found that rats with a
history of forward pairings of pentobarbital and lithium ate less
kaolin, which is consistent with CAS.