Abstract
Rationale
The relationship between age, ethanol intake, and the hedonic value of ethanol is key to understanding the motivation to consume ethanol.
Objective
It is uncertain whether ethanol drinking during adolescence changes ethanol’s hedonic value into adulthood.
Methods
The current study compared voluntary intermittent ethanol consumption (IAE; 2-bottle choice; 20%v/v) among adolescent and adult Long-Evans rats to examine the effects of age and IAE on taste reactivity in adulthood. For taste reactivity, orally infused fluids included water, ethanol (5, 20, and 40%v/v), and sucrose (0.01, 0.1, 1M).
Results
IAE results indicate that adolescents drank more ethanol during IAE but had a lower rate of change in ethanol consumption across time than adults due to initially high adolescent drinking. During taste reactivity testing for ethanol, IAE rats had greater hedonic responding, less aversive responding, and a more positive relationship between hedonic responses and ethanol concentration than water-receiving control rats. Hedonic responses had positive, while aversive responses had negative relationships with ethanol concentration and total ethanol consumed during IAE. Adolescent+IAE rats displayed less hedonic and more aversive responses to ethanol than Adult+IAE rats. Sucrose responding was unrelated to ethanol consumption.
Conclusions
These results suggest that ethanol consumption influences the future hedonic and aversive value of ethanol in a way that makes ethanol more palatable with greater prior consumption. However, it appears that those drinking ethanol as adolescents may be more resistant to this palatability shift than those first drinking as adults, suggesting different mechanisms of vulnerability to consumption escalation for adolescents and adults.
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Acknowledgements
Special thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the following undergraduates that made this research possible: Mykenzi Allison, Chase Cunningham, Joanne Gomendoza, Jared Rack, and P. Mateo Small.
Funding
MC and TW were supported during this experiment by the National Institutes of Health Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) Grant P20GM113109 at the Cognitive and Neurobiological Approaches to Plasticity (CNAP) Center, Kansas State University.
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Wukitsch, T.J., Cain, M.E. The effects of voluntary adolescent alcohol consumption on alcohol taste reactivity in Long Evans rats. Psychopharmacology 238, 1713–1728 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-021-05805-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-021-05805-y