Cholecystokinin as a stimulus in drug discrimination learning

Animals were trained to discriminate a relatively low dose of the octapeptide cholecystokinin (CCK) from distilled water within the conditioned taste aversion baseline of drug discrimination learning. Specifically, rats were injected with CCK (5.6 micrograms/kg) prior to the presentation of saccharin-LiCl pairings and with the CCK vehicle prior to the presentation of saccharin alone. After 10 conditioning trials (40 days), subjects acquired the discrimination, avoiding saccharin consumption following administration of CCK and consuming the same saccharin solution following the drug vehicle. Once the discrimination was acquired, a generalization function was determined for doses above and below that of the training stimulus. At doses below the training dose of CCK (i.e., 0, 3.2, and 4.2 micrograms/kg), subjects drank at control levels, whereas at the training dose and above (10 micrograms/kg) subjects significantly reduced consumption. That a relatively low dose of CCK can be used as a discriminative stimulus within a drug discrimination design may be important in that the procedure can now be used in the assessment of the pharmacological characteristics of CCK at a dose similar to that used in other behavioral assessments of the compound.