Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2013 Jul 2:119:79-85.
doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2013.06.012. Epub 2013 Jun 13.

Reduced palatability in pain-induced conditioned taste aversions

Jian-You Lin  1 , Joe Arthurs, Steve Reilly
Affiliations

Reduced palatability in pain-induced conditioned taste aversions

Jian-You Lin et al. Physiol Behav. .

Abstract

The current study investigated whether internal pain-inducing agents can modulate palatability of a tastant in the same way as illness-inducing agents (e.g., lithium chloride). Similar to traditional conditioned taste aversion (CTA) experiments, during conditioning the rats were exposed to a saccharin solution followed by intraperitoneal injections of either gallamine (Experiment 1) or hypertonic sodium chloride (NaCl; Experiments 1 and 2). In addition to the total amount consumed, the time of each lick was recorded for lick pattern analysis. The results showed that both gallamine and hypertonic NaCl caused suppression in saccharin intake. Importantly, both lick cluster size and initial lick rate (the measures of taste palatability) were reduced as well. This pattern of results suggests that these pain-inducing agents reduce the hedonic value of the associated tastant and thus CTA is acquired. The current finding serves as evidence supporting the view that CTA is a broadly tuned mechanism that can be triggered by changes in internal body states following consummatory experience.

Keywords: Gallamine; Hypertonic sodium chloride; Lick cluster size; Lithium chloride; Rats.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Experiment 1: Mean (±SE) conditioned stimulus (0.1% saccharin)-directed performance across the five conditioning trials and one taste only test trial in rats receiving contingent injections of isotonic NaCl (Control), lithium chloride (LiCl), gallamine, or hypertonic NaCl (hNaCl). Note that due to rapid learning, the LiCl Group received two conditioning trials followed by four taste only trials. A: Intake; B: Cluster size; C: Initial lick rate.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Experiment 2: Mean (±SE) conditioned stimulus (0.1% saccharin)-directed performance across the four 5-min conditioning trials (Panels A, B and C) and the two 15-min taste only test trials (Panels D, E and F) in rats receiving contingent injections of isotonic NaCl (Control) or hypertonic NaCl (hNaCl). Panels A & D: Intake; Panels B & E: Lick cluster size; Panels C & F: Initial lick rate.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Allison J, Castellan NJ., Jr Temporal characteristics of nutritive drinking in rats and humans. J Comp Physiol Psychol. 1970;70:116–25.
    1. American Psychological Association . Guidelines for ethical conduct in the care and use of animals. American Psychological Association; Washington DC: 1996.
    1. Arthurs J, Lin JY, Amodeo LR, Reilly S. Reduced palatability in drug-induced taste aversion: II. Aversive and rewarding unconditioned stimuli. Behav Neurosci. 2012;126:433–44. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Baird JP, St John SJ, Nguyen EAN. Temporal and qualitative dynamics of conditioned taste aversion processing: Combined generalization testing and licking microstructure analysis. Behav Neurosci. 2005;119:983–1003. - PubMed
    1. Barker LM, Best MR, Domjan M. Learning mechanisms in food selection. Baylor University Press; Waco, TX: 1977.

Publication types