Ethanol Induced Conditioned Place Preference in Japanese Quail: Pilot Study

Stimuli (e.g., beer bottle) related to alcohol have been shown to elicit relapse in persons with substance use disorders. Therefore, it is important to understand the relationship between these stimuli and their ability to elicit alcohol consumption. Conditioned place preference (CPP) is a behavioral procedure that can be used to gauge the rewarding and aversive components of alcohol using visual cues. In the current experiment quail were administered ethanol (alcohol) (1 g/kg [ethanol=5; water=6]) and confined to a chamber with one colored light and on alternative days quail were paired with another light and administered water. Following conditioning the quail were given free access to both chambers and lights.Orientation to the light was measured manually. A one-way between subject's ANOVA was conducted to compare the effect of treatment (ethanol, water) on time spent orientating to the light paired with treatment. There was no significant difference between the subjects that received ethanol versus those that received water, F (1,10) = 1.478, p = 2.55. However, this was not surprising as we had a small sample size. Therefore, we looked at only the 5 subjects that received ethanol. We ran a paired sample t-test with the subjects that received ethanol and found a significant difference between the time they spent orientating to the ethanol paired light from the pre-test (M=3.41, SEM=1.77) and the post-test (M=0.04, SEM 0.01), indicating a possible aversion to ethanol, t (4) = -3.183) = p = 0.03.This is one of the first (pilot) studies to investigate discrete cues (light) in a visual model (avian) of CPP. Because cues in the environment have been shown to increase the probability of relapse, this model may be important for future research in behavioral and pharmacological treatments for cue induced relapse of alcohol treatment seeking users.