Water adulteration with citric acid: Effects on drinking and responsivity to regulatory challenges

Watson, P. J.; Beatey, Shannon; Wagner, Fred; Stahl, Thomas J.

doi:10.1016/0031-9384(86)90025-9

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…The keys to the success of the method is that rats drink less citric acid water than their satiety for plain water (thus maintaining motivation for the task), but enough to maintain long-term health (thus, are not water restricted). These facts have already been demonstrated for male Long-Evans rats (Watson et al, 1986 ). It is likely that the methods described here can be adapted to other rat strains and other rodent species as well, but this remains to be demonstrated.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 57%

“…We did observe a reduced growth rate in juveniles raised on CA water, which was directly related to their reduced fluid consumption. Based on previous research this is likely due to reduced food consumption (Watson et al, 1986 ). For the purpose of this demonstration, these rats were not given access to water rewards in tasks nor any other source of hydration.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous studies had demonstrated that rats provided with unpalatable water will drink less than when provided with plain water, but nevertheless maintain weight and general health for long periods of time. This was shown for adult male Wistar rats with 0.1% quinine hydrochloride in their water (Nicolaidis and Rowland, 1975 ) and for adult male Long-Evans rats with up to 4% citric acid (CA) in their water (Watson et al, 1986 ). In both cases rats consumed approximately half as much water when it was adulterated, and also reduced food intake.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…This observation suggested to us that rats maintained on ad lib unpalatable water would be motivated to perform tasks for water rewards. With quinine water, adaptive increases in water consumption in response to stressors (such as elevated temperature or salt) are attenuated; behavioral regulation of fluid intake was more normal with citric acid (Watson et al, 1986 ; Watson and Swartwood, 1990 ). Moreover, long term intake of quinine, as for malaria treatment, is associated with toxicity, including auditory, visual and neurological pathology (Bateman and Dyson, 1986 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Training Rats Using Water Rewards Without Water Restriction

Reinagel

2018

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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High-throughput behavioral training of rodents has been a transformative development for systems neuroscience. Water or food restriction is typically required to motivate task engagement. We hypothesized a gap between physiological water need and hedonic water satiety that could be leveraged to train rats for water rewards without water restriction. We show that when Citric Acid (CA) is added to water, female rats drink less, yet consume enough to maintain long term health. With 24 h/day access to a visual task with water rewards, rats with ad lib CA water performed 84% ± 18% as many trials as in the same task under water restriction. In 2-h daily sessions, rats with ad lib CA water performed 68% ± 13% as many trials as under water restriction. Using reward sizes <25 μl, rats with ad lib CA performed 804 ± 285 trials/day in live-in sessions or 364 ± 82 trials/day in limited duration daily sessions. The safety of CA water amendment was previously shown for male rats, and the gap between water need and satiety was similar to what we observed in females. Therefore, it is likely that this method will generalize to male rats, though this remains to be shown. We conclude that at least in some contexts rats can be trained using water rewards without water restriction, benefitting both animal welfare and scientific productivity.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 57%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Training Rats Using Water Rewards Without Water Restriction

Reinagel

2018

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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“…CA is a food preservative which makes water taste slightly sour. Rats reduce their intake of CA water without getting sick or dehydrated (Watson et al, 1986).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citric Acid Water as an Alternative to Water Restriction for High-Yield Mouse Behavior

Urai

Aguillon-Rodriguez

Laranjeira

et al. 2021

eNeuro

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for valuable comments on the manuscript. Shan Shen provided support with DataJoint queries, and Alexander Hastava and Anup Khanal assisted with the preparation of CA Hydrogels and mouse weighing. CONFLICT OF INTEREST The authors report no conflict of interest. FUNDING SOURCES AEU is supported by the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. FC was supported by an EMBO long-term fellowship and an AXA postdoctoral fellowship. The International Brain Laboratory is 2 supported by the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain and the Wellcome Trust (grant numbers 209558 and 216324).

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