Consumption of alcohol compared to another bitter solution in a limited access drinking paradigm.

A number of recent studies have shown that free-feeding rats will consume pharmacologically significant amounts of alcohol when given access to alcohol for short periods of time daily. The present experiment was designed to examine the role of taste in inducing alcohol consumption in this type of periodic availability paradigm, by comparing amounts drunk thereby to amounts of another bitter solution, sucrose octa acetate (SOA), presented on a similar schedule. In contrast to alcohol, which was consistently preferred to water, at a concentration as high as 12% (w/v), preference for SOA diminished across days, indicating that the bitter taste alone was insufficient to increase consumption of this solution. The results also suggest the animals may be drinking in response to external conditioning stimuli, an effect which has previously been demonstrated in regard to feeding.