Detection of taste aversion induced by weak unconditioned stimluli such as rotation

Résumé 0

"Detection of taste aversions induced by weak unconditionedstimuli like body rotarion. The main aim of the present study was todevelop a behavioural procedure in order to detect mild taste aversionsinduced by body rotation and low doses of LiCl in Wistar rats. The proposedprocedure involves a choice-test between tastes with different previouspreferences. Experiment 1a showed that, when decaffeinated coffee and cidervinegar are used, body-rotation induced aversions to the preferred coffeesolution are evident during the choice-test only if the neophobic response tothe lest preferred vinegar has been eliminated by a previous preexposure. Asingle preexposure before the choice-test is enough to eliminate neophobia(Experiment 1b). In Experiment 2 the same procedure effectively detectedmild aversions induced by i.p. injected low doses (0.15M; 0.2% b.w.)ofLiCl. The relevance of the proposed procedure lies in its potentialapplication to the psychobiological study of taste aversion learning and it isproposed as a specially sensitive behavioural tool for detecting mildaversions induced by weak unconditioned stimuli, like body rotarion."