Malaise can condition avoidance of high-viscosity fluids

Abstract

Previous researchers have assumed that malaise-inducing drugs condition aversions to tastes more readily than to textural stimuli. The present report shows that rats given a single injection of lithium chloride after they have sampled a viscous fluid, subsequently showed greater avoidance of that fluid than did control rats. Rats learned this response even when the lithium chloride injection was given 60 min after they sampled the viscous fluid. The generalization gradient for viscous fluids is apparently very broad, because rats trained to avoid 11 or 95 cp fluids subsequently avoided 11 and 95 cp fluids to a similar degree. Nevertheless, this avoidance is based on textural cues because rats injected with lithium chloride after ingesting one viscous fluid subsequently avoided a wide variety of viscous fluids, including those made from carbohydrate polymers (algin, guar, xanthan), a modified carbohydrate (methyl cellulose), and a protein (methyl cellulose). However, the flavors of viscous gums may influence texture aversion.