Texas Research Society on Alcoholism—34th Annual Scientific Meeting

Purpose: Previously, we developed a procedure which showed that longer histories of reinforced alternative behavior decrease the risk of alcohol use disorder relapse caused by a range of stimuli which had previously occasioned drinking.The decrease in relapse risk was likely due to a decrease in attention to the stimuli over the course of repeated engagement in the alternative behavior.However, the previous procedure was lengthy and time consuming and did not mirror the procedure we used to observe changes in relapse risk.This study aimed at replicating the previous relationship between the duration of engaging in an alternative behavior and shift in stimulus generalization for drinking using a procedure that allows longitudinal analysis over time that is consistent with other procedures we have developed.Methods: Rats were trained to respond for ethanol in the presence of one stimulus (16 kHz tone; high-cost food stimulus; food Fixed Ratio (FR)150 and ethanol FR5), and for food in the presence of another stimulus (8 kHz tone; low-cost food; food and ethanol FR5).Then, subjects were exposed to 10 consecutive sessions with reinforced high-cost food stimulus only.Following this 10-day ethanol exposure, subjects were introduced to recovery-like sessions with food predominant responding in the presence of the low-cost food stimulus only.During these sessions, rats were exposed to non-reinforced graded stimulus alternation from 8 to 16 kHz alternating with the reinforced low-cost food stimulus.The number of responses on each lever before completing 5 responses on either lever was the main measure.Results: Consistent with earlier procedure, the current procedure showed that graded variation of tone from 8 to 16 kHz produced a graded increase in responding for ethanol compared to responding for food.In addition, longer periods of engaging in recovery-like responding (under the low-cost food stimulus) shift the generalization function downwards.However, the asymptote was lower than the previous procedure due to the exclusive exposure to reinforced lowcost food stimulus in non-test components of the testing sessions. Conclusion:The present procedure reveals a similar pattern of stimulus generalization over longer periods of recovery.With earlier studies, this strengthens our hypothesis that shifts in attention to alcohol-related stimuli are important to the development of relapse resistance during recovery.