Learning and Tolerance to the Ataxic Effect of Ethanol

• Published in: Pharmacology, biochemistry and behavior Vol. 61; no. 1; pp. 131 - 142
• Main Authors: Larson, Susan J., Siegel, Shepard
• Format: Journal Article Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY Elsevier Inc 01-09-1998; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Alcohol tolerance; Alcoholism and acute alcohol poisoning; Animals; Ataxia; Ataxia - chemically induced; Ataxia - psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Central Nervous System Depressants - pharmacology; Conditioning; Conditioning, Operant - drug effects; Drug Tolerance; Ethanol - pharmacology; Ethanol tolerance; External inhibition; Learning - drug effects; Male; Medical sciences; Photic Stimulation; Rats; Rats, Sprague-Dawley; Toxicology; Ataxia; Conditioning; External inhibition; Alcohol tolerance; Ethanol tolerance; Nervous system diseases; Intraperitoneal administration; Ethanol; Rat; Toxicity; Rodentia; Tolerance; Classical conditioning; Intertrial interval; Cerebral disorder; Vertebrata; Sensorimotor coordination; Mammalia; Acquisition process; Animal; Central nervous system disease; Inhibition; Neurological disorder
• ISSN: 0091-3057; 1873-5177
• DOI: 10.1016/S0091-3057(98)00072-0

It has been well documented that drug-associated cues are important for the development and expression of drug tolerance. The Pavlovian conditioning analysis of tolerance emphasizes the importance of a drug-associated cues to tolerance by equating a drug administration with a learning trial. According to this analysis, tolerance should be subject to external inhibition, the disruption of a conditional response by a novel stimulus. We previously reported that tolerance to the ataxic effect of ethanol was attenuated by a novel strobe/noise presentation
(31). In this article we report evidence of a compensatory CR in rats tolerant to the ataxic effect of ethanol as tested on the tilting plane. Both the compensatory CR and tolerance were disrupted by the presentation of a novel strobe/noise stimulus providing converging evidence that the attenuation of tolerance by a novel stimulus results from external inhibition of Pavlovian conditioning. The disruption of ethanol tolerance and the conditional response mediating tolerance was also apparent when the novel omission of the strobe/noise stimulus was used as the external inhibitor in rats made tolerant to ethanol with the stimulus on. Finally, we have shown that the disruptive effect of a novel stimulus on ethanol tolerance is decreased when there is a 10-day delay between the final tolerance development session and testing, demonstrating that the interval between training and testing is important when assessing associative tolerance.