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Related Experiment Videos

Drug discrimination: stimulus control during repeated testing in extinction.

T J Zarcone1, N A Ator

  • 1Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, USA. zarcone@ukans.edu

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
|February 24, 2001
PubMed
Summary

This study shows that even when rats respond less frequently, their ability to distinguish between lorazepam and no drug remains strong. This indicates reliable stimulus control in drug discrimination tasks.

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Area of Science:

  • Behavioral neuroscience
  • Pharmacology
  • Psychology

Background:

  • Drug discrimination procedures are crucial for understanding how substances affect behavior.
  • Assessing stimulus control under varying response rates is essential for validating behavioral assays.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between response rate and stimulus control in rats trained to discriminate lorazepam.
  • To evaluate the impact of repeated extinction exposures on drug discrimination performance.

Main Methods:

  • Rats were trained on a two-lever drug-discrimination task with lorazepam (1.0 mg/kg) or saline.
  • Modified fixed-ratio (FR) 10 schedules were used, requiring 10 consecutive responses for reinforcement.
  • Extinction tests were conducted to assess stimulus control without reinforcement.

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Main Results:

  • Repeated exposure to extinction conditions reduced overall response rates in all rats.
  • Despite reduced rates, stimulus control, measured by lever choice and FR 10 completion, remained high.
  • The percentage of total FR 10s measure proved more robust than percentage of total responses under low-rate conditions.

Conclusions:

  • Response rate and stimulus control are independent in well-trained animals during drug discrimination.
  • This independence supports the validity of interpreting discriminative effects of novel conditions, even with low response rates.