Establishment of a diazepam preference in human volunteers following a differential-conditioning history of placebo versus diazepam choice.

Abstract

This study examined whether preference for a drug (diazepam or placebo) could be switched using conditioning procedures. During the first 4 sessions of Phase 1, 6 participants received 5 mg of diazepam or placebo under double-blind conditions. During the remaining 5 sessions of Phase 1, participants selected the drug they wished to receive. The first 4 sessions of Phase 2 were a replication of Phase 1, except that following ingestion of the drug, participants completed a computer task for which they could earn money. Payment for the computer task was lowest following ingestion of the drug they preferred in Phase I and highest following the drug they had avoided. Preference was reassessed during the last 5 sessions of Phase 2. Five of the participants preferred placebo in Phase 1 but diazepam in Phase 2. Subjective responses to the drugs also changed across the 2 phases.

The Contribution of Postingestive Associations to Alcohol Self-Administration

“…If we remove the participant who abstained on two occasions, preference for the high-payoff-associated drink increased to 83% (5/6) (chi-square with Yate's correction = 13.54, one-sided, p < .05). This level of preference is similar to that previously reported for placebo by Johanson et al (1995) and for diazepam by Alessi et al (2002). Moreover, the preference appeared to be relatively stable over all six sessions, again using the Johanson et al (1995) criterion for the last three sessions, 66% (4/6) (excluding Participant 4, who elected not to consume on two occasions) evidenced a preference for the drink associated with the high payoff.…”

“…Not one of the participants selected the drink associated with high payoff on every occasion. This is in contrast to the Alessi et al (2002) and Johanson et al (1995) studies, in which choice was often exclusive. It is worth mentioning that Participant 1 elected to consume the drink associated with the low payoff on all six choices, perhaps suggesting that the participant was seeking an intoxicated, performance-degrading experience.…”

“…Using a similar procedure Alessi, Roll, Reilly, and Johanson (2002) demonstrated that preference for placebo relative to 5 mg of diazepam could be reversed. The majority of participants who initially avoided diazepam self-administered it following the conditioning procedure in which diazepam was associated with presumed enhanced performance and higher monetary payoff, relative to placebo.…”

“…We have elected to use preference as a measure of relative reinforcing efficacy in these studies, as was done in Johanson, Mattox, and Schuster (1995) and Alessi et al (2002). Preference is easily assessed.…”

Nicotine does not produce state-dependent effects on learning in a Pavlovian appetitive goal tracking task with rats

“…That is, perhaps the abuse liability of nicotine-containing products could be affected by conditioned associations in which nicotine is an interoceptive cue for other appetitive USs [7,9,34]. Such evidence has been found in humans using diazepam [1] and ethanol [31] as the interoceptive cue. Panel A displays the mean dipper entries per second across the course of discrimination training for the 0.2 mg/kg nicotine sessions and the saline sessions for Experiment 1.…”