PubMed · 5206301
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G Globetti. 1971. Problem drinking in an abstinence setting.. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/5206301/
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BACKGROUND: Infant rats detect small amounts of alcohol (175 mg%) that are present in maternal milk whenever the dam is moderately intoxicated with alcohol. Interaction with an alcohol-intoxicated mother during the first 2 weeks of life facilitates the preweanling's subsequent discrimination of alcohol's orosensory attributes and produces conditioned aversion to alcohol. The present study further analyzed the hedonic content of infantile alcohol memories established in the nursing context by testing the interaction between experiences with an alcohol-intoxicated dam and learning procedures aimed at establishing an appetitive conditioned response toward alcohol. METHODS: Experiment 1 was to determine appropriate parameters to establish a reliable conditioned preference for alcohol in 16-day-old infants. For conditioning, intraorally infused sucrose solution (appetitive reinforcer) was paired with alcohol's orosensory cues derived from an acute state of alcohol intoxication (3 g/kg). Two control groups included an unpaired condition and a group given sucrose after water intubation. Infants then were evaluated in an alcohol intake test. Relative to control animals, a reliable conditioned preference for alcohol was registered in paired pups. In experiment 2, these conditioning procedures were applied to infant rats which, before conditioning, suckled from dams subjected to a 2.5 g/kg alcohol dose (intragastric) or from water-treated females during postpartum days 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13. RESULTS: Experiment 2 showed that maternal treatment significantly affected the establishment of conditioned preferences for alcohol. Whereas pups reared by control dams exhibited reliable appetitive conditioning to alcohol, infants raised by alcohol dams completely failed to develop appetitive conditioning. CONCLUSIONS: The present results suggest that alcohol-related memories generated via infantile interactions with an intoxicated dam counteract subsequent conditioning of alcohol ingestion. In conjunction with prior studies, it is concluded that alcohol-related nursing experiences are capable of promoting alcohol memories with a negative hedonic content.
The effects of a short-term ethanol treatment on hippocampus have been studied in mice exhibiting intoxication signs. The alterations of neurons and astrocytes as well as quantitative changes of calbindin D28k-immunoreactivity and glial fibrillary acidic protein-immunoreactivity (GFAP-IR) in selected regions of the dorsal hippocampus were examined using anti-calbindin and anti-GFAP monoclonal anti-body (mAb), respectively. The administration of 6% (v/v) ethanol during first week led to the neuronal death and decrease of the total number of calbindin-IR neurons in the examined brain regions. Moreover, the calbindin positive neurons were shown to have diminished processes following short-term ethanol exposure. These neuronal changes were associated with the increase of the GFAP-IR astrocytes. Hypertrophy of cell bodies and cytoplasmic processes of reactive astrocytes were also seen. In addition, dense, thick and highly-stained GFAP-IR cells with long processes in granular cell layer appeared entering into molecular layer of dentate gyrus. In agreement with the discrepancy percentage of neuronal cell loss and increase of reactive astrocytes detected by calbindin and GFAP-IR using image quantitative analysis, the regional differences in the vulnerability to the neurotoxic effects following short-term ethanol exposure were found: CA3>CA2>CA1>DG. These findings also illustrate the importance of correlation between calbindin and GFAP-IR when determining the morphological alteration of neuron and astroglial following short-term ethanol treatment. The disruption of calbindin and GFAP could affect neuronal-astroglial interaction, resulting in disturbance of behaviors dependent on hippocampus.