Effect of pretrial running on running-based taste aversion learning in rats

Voluntary wheel running works as an effective unconditioned stimulus (US) to establish conditioned taste aversion (CTA) in rats with a preceding taste solution as a conditioned stimulus (CS): repeated CS-US pairings evoke avoidance of the CS in the two-choice (CS vs. tap water) test administered at the end of the training. Experiment 1 demonstrated that exposure to running immediately before each CS-US trial alleviates CTA. Subsequent two experiments explored the characteristics of the proximal US-preexposure effect: the alleviation of CTA by the pretrial running was not affected by changing the background contexts between the pretrial and the trial running (Experiment 2) or by signaling the pretrial running via another taste cue (Experiment 3). These results indicate the robustness of the proximal US-preexposure effect and fit well with the predictions of Wagner's (1976, 1978) priming theory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).