Effects of drugs on nondiscriminated avoidance behavior

✍ Scribed by George C. Stone

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1964
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 655 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0033-3158
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00413154

✦ Synopsis

The introduction into psychopharmaeology of behavioral techniques requiring extensive preliminary training of subjects has led to the repeated and intensive study of individual animals. In the course of such procedures, the investigator can observe some consistencies in the variations among subjects' responses to a given dose of a drug. In the normal course of drug evaluation, the abnormal response produces an annoying defect in a set of data. However, it seems possible that the differences in response to drugs may provide valuable information regarding their mode of action.

Studies of the susceptibility of experimental animals to drugs and of qualitative differences in response to a single agent have been sparse although they are now beginning to appear. A number of the factors that affect animals' responses are mentioned in a recent symposium (BRow~ et al. 1962). KOR_~ETSKu DAWSOn, and PELIKA~ (1963) have reported a prehminary experiment in which several animals were given multiple doses of both pentobarbital and d-amphetamine.

The present study represents a preliminary investigation of the nature and extent of differences among rats in their response to several familiar psychotropic drugs. Over a span of 15 months a group of rats was tested weekly on a nondiscriminated avoidance task in an effort to establish dose-response relationships for each subject on each of five different drugs.

Method

Thirteen male, Long-Evans (Diab]o) rats which weighed approximately 75--85 g on arrival were subjects. During their first two weeks in the laboratory they were housed two or three to a cage and thereafter individually in wire-bottomed cages that measured 18 • 18 X 24 cm. They were maintained on ad lib. food and water at all times, except for one week during their preliminary training.