Intake despite negative consequences (compulsivity) contributes strongly to the harm of alcohol use disorder, making the underlying psychological and circuit mechanisms of great importance. To gain insight into possible underlying action strategies, we compared rat licking microstructure across compulsion-like and non-compulsive conditions. We previously showed that drinking under a moderate-challenge, quinine-alcohol model (Alc-ModQ) shows less variable responding in many measures, suggesting a more automatic strategy to overcome challenge. Here, we reanalyzed our original data, newly focusing on the behavioral profile of higher-challenge intake (100 mg/L quinine in alcohol, Alc-HighQ). Alc-HighQ greatly dropped consumption, yet retained aspects of greater automaticity and drive seen with Alc-ModQ, including earlier bout initiation and measures suggesting more stereotyped tongue control. In contrast, Alc-HighQ disordered bout generation and timing. Importantly, only fast-starting bouts persisted under Alc-HighQ, and while there were many fewer longer Alc-HighQ bouts, they still contributed >50 % of consumption. Also, longer bouts under Alc-HighQ had an early, several-second period with greater chance of stopping, but afterwards showed similar persistence and recovery from slow licking as other drinking conditions. Together, our findings elucidate novel behavioral indicators of successful and unsuccessful epochs of Alc-HighQ, compulsion-like intake. We also relate findings to congruent human and animal work implicating anterior insula and medial prefrontal cortices as critical for compulsion-like alcohol responding, and where ventral frontal cortex has been more associated with overall action plan and tongue control (retained under Alc-HighQ), with medial cortex more related to proximal action timing (disrupted under Alc-HighQ except after faster bout initiation).

尽管产生负面后果（强迫性），但饮酒仍会严重加剧酒精使用障碍的危害，因此潜在的心理和循环机制非常重要。为了深入了解可能的潜在行动策略，我们比较了强迫性和非强迫性条件下老鼠舔舐的微观结构。我们之前表明，在中等挑战的奎宁酒精模型（Alc-ModQ）下饮酒在许多措施中显示出较少的可变反应，这表明了一种更自动的策略来克服挑战。在这里，我们重新分析了原始数据，新关注高挑战摄入量（酒精中 100 毫克/升奎宁，Alc-HighQ）的行为特征。 Alc-HighQ 大大降低了消耗，但保留了 Alc-ModQ 所具有的更高的自动化性和驱动力，包括更早的回合启动和建议更刻板的舌头控制的措施。相比之下，Alc-HighQ 的生成和计时是无序的。重要的是，只有快速启动的回合在 Alc-HighQ 下持续存在，虽然较长的 Alc-HighQ 回合要少得多，但它们仍然贡献了 >50% 的消耗。此外，在 Alc-HighQ 条件下进行较长时间的饮酒时，其停止时间较早，有几秒钟的时间，但随后表现出与其他饮酒条件相似的持久性和从缓慢舔舐中恢复的能力。总之，我们的研究结果阐明了 Alc-HighQ（强迫性摄入）成功和不成功时期的新行为指标。 我们还将研究结果与一致的人类和动物研究联系起来，表明前岛叶和内侧前额叶皮质对于强迫性酒精反应至关重要，并且腹侧额叶皮质与整体行动计划和舌头控制（保留在 Alc-HighQ 下）更加相关，内侧皮质与近端动作计时更相关（在 Alc-HighQ 下中断，除非在更快的回合开始后）。