RT Journal Article
T1 Dissecting operant alcohol self‐administration using saccharin‐fading procedure
A1 Calleja Conde, Javier
A1 Echeverry Alzate, Víctor
A1 Buhler, Kora Mareen Katharina
A1 Morales García, José Ángel
A1 Segovia Rodríguez, Lucía
A1 Durán González, Pedro
A1 Olmos, Pedro
A1 Rodríguez De Fonseca, Fernando Antonio
A1 Giné Domínguez, Elena
A1 López Moreno, José Antonio
AB BackgroundAlthough alcohol use disorder is a complex human pathology, the use of animal models represents an opportunity to study some aspects of this pathology. One of the most used paradigms to study the voluntary alcohol consumption in rodents is operant self‐administration (OSA).AimsIn order to facilitate the performance of this paradigm, we aim to describe some critical steps of OSA under a saccharin‐fading procedure.Material & MethodsWe used 40 male Wistar rats to study the process of acquiring the operant response through a saccharin‐fading procedure under a fixed ratio (FR1) schedule of reinforcement. Next, we analyze the alcohol introduction and concentration increase, the effect of an alcohol deprivation, and the analogy between this paradigm with the Drinking in the Dark‐Multiple Scheduled Access paradigm.ResultsDuring alcohol concentration increase, animals reduced their lever presses in accordance with the increase in alcohol concentration. On the contrary, the consumption measured in g·kg−1 BW showed a great stability. The lever presses pattern within operant session changes with the introduction of different alcohol concentrations: at higher alcohol concentrations, animals tended to accumulate most of their presses in the initial period of the session.DiscussionWe show the utility of fading with low concentrations of saccharin and the evolution of the operant response through the different concentrations of alcohol.ConclusionTaken together, our results aimed to dissect the acquisition and maintenance of OSA behavior as well as other related variables, to facilitate the understanding and performance of this paradigm.
PB Wiley
SN 2574-173X
YR 2023
FD 2023-02-02
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/111046
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/111046
LA eng
NO : Calleja-Conde J, Echeverry-Alzate V, Bühler K-M, Morales-García JÁ, Segovia-Rodríguez L, Durán-González P, et al. Dissecting operant alcohol selfadministration using saccharin-fading procedure. Neuropsychopharmacol Rep. 2023;43:12–22. https://doi. org/10.1002/npr2.12289
NO Instituto de Salud Carlos III
NO Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria
NO Ministerio de Sanidad (España)
DS Docta Complutense
RD 31 dic 2025