Animal models have significantly contributed to the understanding of reward-related behaviors, such as in Substance Use Disorder research. One of the most heavily utilized paradigms to date is conditioned place preference (CPP). However, CPP is limited by non-contingent exposure.

Our new method advances this classic method by utilizing its benefits and simultaneously diminishing its limitations. We used a traditional 3-compartment CPP apparatus, where each chamber differs by both visual and tactile contexts. We restructured the apparatus allowing for insertion of bottles so that mice could orally self-administer sucrose or morphine-containing solutions in a specific context.

Our results show that mice who self-administer sucrose or morphine show a place preference for the sucrose- or morphine-paired chamber. This place preference lasts for 21 d in sucrose-treated, but not morphine-treated mice. Additionally, we found that that mice will drink more water in the morphine-paired context during extinction tests.

This model combines the distinct contextual cues associated with conditioned place preference and combines them with voluntary self-administration, thus enabling researchers to measure behavior using a model that incorporates spatial memory involved in affective states, while also providing a quantifiable readout of context/environment-specific drug seeking.

In conclusion, we combined CPP and voluntary intake to establish a novel technique to assess not only preference for a context associated with rewarding stimuli (natural or drug), but also seeking, retention, and locomotor activity. This model can be further utilized to examine other drugs of abuse, extinction training, other learning models, or to allow for the assessment of neurobiological manipulations.

动物模型极大地促进了与奖励相关行为的理解，例如在物质使用障碍研究中。迄今为止使用最广泛的范例之一是条件位置偏好（CPP）。但是，CPP受非或有风险限制。

我们的新方法通过利用其优势并同时减少了其局限性来改进这种经典方法。我们使用了传统的三室CPP装置，每个室的视觉和触觉环境都不同。我们对设备进行了重组，允许插入瓶子，以便小鼠可以在特定情况下口服自我给予蔗糖或含吗啡的溶液。

我们的结果表明，自我给予蔗糖或吗啡的小鼠对蔗糖或吗啡配对的腔室显示出位置偏好。在蔗糖处理的小鼠（而非吗啡处理的小鼠）中，该位置偏好持续21天。此外，我们发现在灭绝试验中，小鼠在吗啡配对的环境中会喝更多的水。

该模型结合了与条件性场所偏好相关的独特上下文线索，并将其与自愿自我管理相结合，从而使研究人员能够使用结合情感状态所涉及的空间记忆的模型来衡量行为，同时还可以量化地读出上下文/环境-具体的药物寻找。

总之，我们结合了CPP和自愿摄入量来建立一种新技术，不仅可以评估与奖励性刺激（自然或药物）相关的环境偏好，还可以评估寻求，保留和运动能力。该模型可进一步用于检查其他滥用药物，灭绝训练，其他学习模型，或用于评估神经生物学操作。