Department of Psychological Sciences, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, 66506, USA.
Department of Psychological Sciences, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, 66506, USA.
Behav Brain Res. 2020 Aug 17;392:112736. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2020.112736. Epub 2020 Jun 2.
Previous examinations of the long-term effects of alcohol exposure on omission-contingency learning have produced mixed results across different age or sex groups, with evidence for faster learning or no effect. However, none of these experiments made comparisons using the same exposure-dose across the age/sex groups. Here, we exposed rats to 6 weeks of alcohol injections (3 days/week, 1.75 or 3.5 g/kg/24-h, i.p. broken up into 2 injections/day) in adolescent/early adult males or females (PND27-66) or adult males (PND62-101). We then tested the rats in autoshaping and omission-contingency tasks. In contrast to our hypotheses, the low 1.75-g/kg/24-h dose led to slower omission learning and the higher 3.5-g/kg/24-h dose had no effect. There were no age- or sex-differences in omission learning. Additionally, during autoshaping training, rats exposed in adolescence/early adulthood had a faster shift to sign-tracking in their sign-tracking/goal-tracking ratios than rats exposed in adulthood, with no consistent effect of alcohol exposure or sex-differences. Our results suggest complex effects of alcohol on the neural substrates of omission-contingency learning at different doses, which will require future investigation.
先前对酒精暴露对忽略条件反应学习的长期影响的研究在不同年龄或性别群体中产生了混杂的结果，有证据表明学习速度更快或没有影响。然而，这些实验都没有在不同年龄/性别组之间使用相同的暴露剂量进行比较。在这里，我们让老鼠在青少年/成年早期雄性或雌性（PND27-66）或成年雄性（PND62-101）中接受 6 周的酒精注射（每周 3 天，1.75 或 3.5 g/kg/24-h，ip 分为 2 次/天）。然后，我们在自动塑造和忽略条件反应任务中测试了这些老鼠。与我们的假设相反，低剂量 1.75 g/kg/24-h 导致忽略学习更慢，高剂量 3.5 g/kg/24-h 则没有影响。在忽略学习中没有年龄或性别差异。此外，在自动塑造训练期间，与在成年期暴露的老鼠相比，在青少年/成年早期暴露的老鼠在其信号追踪/目标追踪比率中更快地转变为信号追踪，而酒精暴露或性别差异没有一致的影响。我们的结果表明，酒精对不同剂量的忽略条件反应学习的神经基础有复杂的影响，这需要进一步研究。
