c-Fos induction in response to taste stimuli previously paired with amphetamine or LiCl during taste aversion learning.

Amphetamine and lithium chloride (LiCl) are both effective unconditioned stimuli (USs) in the establishment of conditioned taste aversions (CTA) in the rat. However, the mechanism of action of these drugs is quite different with the area postrema and related emetic circuitry critical to the response to LiCl but not amphetamine. c-Fos immunohistochemistry was used to define brain regions activated during drug administration and during expression of a CTA using either amphetamine or LiCl as the US drug. Administration of LiCl induced dense c-Fos-like immunoreactivity (c-FLI) in the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS) while amphetamine induced only light staining in this area. A conditioned stimulus (CS) saccharin solution paired with amphetamine, however, was associated with c-FLI in NTS in a pattern quite similar to that seen to a LiCl-paired CS. This suggests that the pattern of c-Fos expression to a taste CS after conditioning is characteristic of aversion conditioning, in general, and appears not to represent a matching of the conditioned response to specific unconditioned effects of the drug. To examine this conditioned response further, c-FLI to the aversive saccharin CS was compared to the response to quinine hydrochloride, which is innately aversive. Although behaviorally the animals' ingestive responses were quite similar, the saccharin CS induced significant elevations of c-FLI in NTS whereas the quinine did not. Thus, a taste which had become aversive by virtue of conditioning induced c-FLI expression in NTS while a taste which was inherently aversive did not.