ArticleAlcohol, clinical & experimental research2024
Validation of the extinction probe trial as a measure of motivation in male and female Long Evans rats.
Article in Alcohol, clinical & experimental research, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Procedural separation of appetitive and consummatory behaviors in operant ethanol self-administration: A review and open-source analytical framework.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2026Review
- Evaluating the impact of concurrent sucrose availability on operant ethanol self-administration in male and female Long Evans rats.Addiction neuroscience · 2025Article
- Individual and sex differences in frontloading behavior and approach- avoidance conflict preference predict addiction-like ethanol seeking in rats.Scientific reports · 2025Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundEthanol self-administration is governed by appetitive and consummatory behaviors. The sipper model procedurally separates these behaviors by training rats to meet a response requirement within 20 min to obtain continuous access to a sipper tube for an additional 20 min. Variations of this paradigm have been developed to quantify appetitive strength by evaluating lever presses during an extinction probe trial (EPT) or by deriving a break point (BP) from a progressive ratio (PR) schedule of reinforcement. However, no study has assessed the relationship between these tasks, within subjects, in both sexes.
methodsMale and female rats (n = 16) were trained to meet a response requirement of 20 to access a slightly sweetened ethanol solution (10% ethanol + 1% sucrose). Two EPTs, during which no operant behavior was reinforced, were interleaved between 18 reinforced sessions. Next, rats completed an across-session PR schedule, where the response requirement increased each session. BP was defined as the highest completed response requirement. We then replicated the methodology in the same subjects responding for a 3% sucrose solution. Finally, the experiment was replicated in a separate cohort of rats (n = 24) trained to a response requirement of 4 to earn access to the ethanol solution and paradigm order (EPT vs. PR) was counterbalanced.
resultsWe report strong, positive correlations between average EPT lever presses and BP across all experiments. No sex differences were observed in appetitive behaviors. However, the two cohorts revealed mixed results when assessing sex differences in consummatory measures.
conclusionsThis study further validates the EPT as a measure of motivation and suggests that similar levels of motivation exist to procure alcohol in males and females. The findings complement the literature showing that appetitive and consummatory processes are distinct and thus should be independently assessed in self-administration paradigms.
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