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Oncologists' reactions to cancer patients' verbal cues.

The diagnosis and treatment of cancer cause considerable psychological distress and morbidity. Consequently, cancer patients have high needs for informational and emotional support and doctors vary in their ability to recognise and address these needs. This study investigated patients' attempts to gain informational and emotional support through the use of verbal cues. The sample consisted of 298 patients with heterogeneous cancers, seeing one of five medical and four radiation oncologists for the first time. Sociodemographic variables and patient anxiety and satisfaction ratings were obtained. Transcripts of the audiotaped consultations were analysed and question-asking, use of indirect cues, cue type (informational or emotional), content categories in which questions and cues occurred and doctor response (responded to or not responded to), were recorded. Patients asked a median of 11 questions and gave two cues per consultation, usually during treatment discussions. Patients gave, and doctors responded to, more informational than emotional cues. Patients gave significantly more informational cues during longer consultations. Younger and female patients gave more cues for emotional support and asked questions. No demographic variables were associated with the doctors' response to emotional and informational cues; however, consultations in which more informational cues were responded to were shorter, even when controlling for the number of cues given. Satisfaction with the consultation and patient anxiety were unaffected by doctors' responses to cues. Overall, results showed that doctors effectively identify and respond to the majority of informational cues; however, they are less observant of and able to address cues for emotional support. Cues can be addressed without lengthening the consultation or increasing patient anxiety.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1986

The responsiveness of Clare-Bishop neurons to size cues for motion stereopsis.

The responsiveness to the size cue, and a combination of the size and motion cues contained in 3-dimensional motion of a visual stimulus was studied in 118 Clare-Bishop (CB) cells, including 37 and 10 cells selectively responsive to approaching (AP) and to recessive motion along the axis through the center of the receptive area and the nose (RC), 40 cells responsive to the frontoparallel motion in the horizontal direction (FP), 23 cells rather non-selectively responsive to the two types of motion (NS) and 8 cells responsive to the size cue but unresponsive to the 3-dimensional motion (SZ). About three quarters of the AP cells (27/37) were responsive to both an increase in the stimulus size and divergent motion of the retinal images in the two eyes, which represents the size and motion cues for the approaching motion along the axis through the center of the receptive area and the nose, and were optimally excited by a combination of the two visual cues. About the same fraction of the RC cells (6/10) was responsive to the motion (convergent motion) and size cues (a decrease in stimulus size), and optimally excited by a combination of the two visual cues. In contrast, only a small fraction of the FP cells (6/40) were sensitive to the size cue, and all FP cells were optimally excited by the single presentation of the motion cue for the frontoparallel motion (either right- or leftward motion in both eyes). Responses were frequently (18/40) smaller for the combined presentation of the two visual cues than for the single presentation of the motion cue. Similarly, a small fraction of the NS cells (7/23) was sensitive to the size cue, but many of them (16/23) were non-selectively responsive to the size cues for the approaching and recessive motion. A similar study in an additional 108 (78 AP and 30 RC) cells which were responsive to approaching or recessive motion vertically or obliquely deviating from the axis through the center of the receptive area and the nose demonstrated that they were also sensitive to both motion and size cues for that approaching or recessive motion, and were optimally excited by a combination of the two visual cues. These findings indicate that the CB cell responsiveness to 3-dimensional motion is based on the integration of the motion and size signals conveyed through the two eyes. A model of neuronal circuitry was constructed to explain the CB cell responsiveness to the motion and size signals.

Action Potentials↗
PubMed1981

Inter-animal olfactory cues in operant drug discrimination procedures in rats.

Olfactory cues from prior subjects in operant chambers were shown to be an effective stimulus which rodents could use to direct lever selection in a typical operant drug discrimination (DD) paradigm. Such cues persisted for very long periods of time (16 h), and were deposited after very short (5 min) operant sessions. In extinction tests inter-animal olfactory cues exerted very strong stimulus control over lever selection. Furthermore, such cues were not specific to individual rodent subjects but were generalizable between subjects. Inter-animal cues directing level selection could be abolished by cleaning operant manipulanda with a 10% alcohol solution. Reanalysis of some DD data previously reported by one of the authors (Goudie 1977) indicated that this specific earlier study (and by implication perhaps other studies) might have been confounded by inter-animal cues. In a DD study with nicotine it was found that the drug cue was antagonized by mecamylamine for all subjects except those who had a reliable olfactory cue from prior subjects to direct lever selection (subjects who possessed both an olfactory and a drug cue to direct lever selection responded in a way suggesting that the exteroceptive olfactory cue controlled behaviour rather than the interoceptive drug cue). These findings indicate that inter-animal olfactory cues could be of considerable methodological significance in DD studies. The possible significance of such cues has not previously been reported upon in detail, and in reports of many DD studies there do not appear to be explicit indications that inter-animal cues have been adequately controlled.

Animals↗
PubMed2001

Effects of 12-h tobacco deprivation on event-related potentials elicited by visual smoking cues.

RATIONALE: A cigarette smoker's reactivity to smoking cues, or cue-reactivity, traditionally has been indexed by self-report and/or measures of autonomic nervous system activity. Recent evidence suggests that measures of central nervous system activity in the form of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) may also index cue-reactivity in smokers. OBJECTIVE: The present study sought to confirm the sensitivity of ERPs to smoking cues and to investigate the question of whether 12 h of smoking deprivation would enhance ERP cue-reactivity to such stimuli. METHODS: Scalp ERPs were recorded to 80 smoking-related pictures and 80 neutral pictures, i.e., similar pictures with a nonsmoking theme, in 19 tobacco-deprived smokers, 17 nondeprived smokers, and 19 nonsmokers. RESULTS: Smokers' N300 amplitudes over fronto-central scalp were larger to neutral than to smoking-related stimuli, thus reflecting N300 smoking cue-reactivity. N300 cue-reactivity was greater for deprived than for nondeprived smokers. Smokers' P300 values were greater to smoking-related than to neutral stimuli, particularly over the centro-parietal area; however, nonsmokers also showed a P300 main effect to smoking cues. Smoking deprivation did not affect P300 cue-reactivity, nor did deprivation affect self-reported urges to smoking relative to neutral cues. CONCLUSIONS: These data confirm the sensitivity of ERPs to tobacco cues in smokers and suggest, additionally, that the cue-reactivity of the N300 component is modulated by smoking deprivation. N300 cue-reactivity may reflect an internally generated priming of the semantic network related to the smokers' need states. Stimulus-category differences in P300 may reflect cue-reactivity in smokers and/or nonaddiction-specific factors in both smokers and nonsmokers.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Use of salient and non-salient visuospatial cues by rats in the Morris Water Maze.

In the Morris Water Maze (MWM), an animal learns the location of a hidden platform relative to distal visual cues in a process known as spatial learning. The visual cues used in MWM experiments are invariably salient in nature, and non-salient cues, such as subtle environmental variations, have not traditionally been considered to play a significant role. However, the role of non-salient cues in spatial navigation has not been adequately investigated experimentally. The objective of this experiment was therefore to determine the relative contribution of salient and non-salient visual cues to spatial navigation in the MWM. Animals were presented with an environment containing both types of visual cues, and were tested in three successive phases of water maze testing, each with a new platform location. Probe tests were used to assess spatial accuracy, and several cue variation trials were run in which both salient and non-salient visual cues were manipulated. It was observed that removal of the salient visual cues did not cause a significant deterioration in performance unless accompanied by disruption of the non-salient visual cues, and that spatial navigation was unimpaired when only the salient visual cues were removed from view. This suggests that during place learning in Long-Evans rats, non-salient visual cues may play a dominant role, at least when salient cue presentation is limited to four cues.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed2003

Weighted linear cue combination with possibly correlated error.

We test hypotheses concerning human cue combination in a slant estimation task. Observers repeatedly adjusted the slant of a plane to 75 degrees. Feedback was provided after each setting and the observers trained extensively until their setting error stabilized. The slant of the plane was defined by either linear perspective alone (a grid of lines) or texture gradient alone (diamond-shaped texture elements) or the two cues together. We chose a High and Low variance version of each cue type and measured setting variability in four single-cue conditions (Low, High for each cue) and in the four possible combined-cue conditions (Low-Low, Low-High, etc.). We compared performance in the combined-cue conditions to predictions based on single-cue performance. The results were consistent with a linear combination of estimates from cues. Six out of eight observers did better with combined cues than with either cue alone. For three observers, performance was consistent with optimal combination of uncorrelated cues. Three other observers' results were also consistent with optimal combination, but with the assumption that internal cue estimates were correlated. The remaining two observers were consistent with sub-optimal cue combination.

Cues↗
PubMed2006

Reactivity to in vivo smoking cues in older adolescent cigarette smokers.

Most smokers initiate smoking in adolescence, and craving for cigarettes may play an important role in maintenance of smoking behavior and relapse to smoking during a quit attempt. Although a significant body of literature explores cue-reactivity in adult smokers, little has been published on cue-reactivity among adolescent smokers. In a previously published work, we found that videotaped smoking cues may not be robust in eliciting craving among adolescent smokers. Hence, in this preliminary study, we examined reactivity to in vivo smoking cues among adolescent smokers (N = 11, average age = 18.1 years, range = 15-19 years, predominantly female). Participants were presented with in vivo smoking and neutral cues (counterbalanced). We recorded subjective craving and real-time heart rate in response to each type of cue. Adolescent smokers had a significantly greater "desire" to smoke (p < .05) in response to smoking cues vs. both baseline and neutral cues. Participants had faster heart rates after the smoking cues during the epochs of 21-30 s and 31-40 s (p values<.05) as compared with baseline, and mean heart rate was higher during the smoking cues relative to neutral cues among participants who received the smoking cues first (p < .05). Results of this preliminary study further demonstrate the feasibility of conducting cue-reactivity studies with adolescent cigarette smokers. Findings from this study suggest that adolescent smokers may show patterns of responding to smoking cues similar to those of adult smokers. Implications for future laboratory studies with adolescent smokers are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

Integration of perspective and disparity cues in surface-orientation-selective neurons of area CIP.

We investigated the effects of linear perspective and binocular disparity, as monocular and binocular depth cues, respectively, on the response of surface-orientation-selective (SOS) neurons in the caudal part of the lateral bank of the intraparietal sulcus (area CIP). During the single-unit recording, monkeys were required to perform the delayed-matching-to-sample (successive same/different discrimination) of discriminating surface orientation in stereoscopic computer graphics. Of 211 visually responsive neurons, 66 were intensively tested using the solid-figure stereogram (SFS) of a square plate with both disparity and perspective cues (D+P condition), and 62 of these were identified as SOS neurons for responding selectively to the orientation of stimuli. All these neurons were further tested using a solid figure with perspective cues alone (P-only condition), and 58% (36/62) of these showed selective response to the orientation of the stimuli. Of the 62 SOS neurons, 35 neurons were also tested using SFS with disparity cues alone (D-only condition) in addition to the D+P and P-only conditions. We classified these 35 neurons into four groups by comparing the response selectivity under the P-only and D-only conditions. More than one-half of these (19/35) were sensitive to both perspective and disparity cues (DP neurons), and nearly one-third (11/35) of these were sensitive to disparity cues alone (D neurons), but a few (2/35) were sensitive to perspective cues alone (P neurons). The remaining (3/35) neurons exhibited orientation selectivity only when both cues were present. In DP neurons, the preferred orientation under the D+P condition was correlated to those under the D-only and P-only conditions, and the response magnitude under the D+P condition was greater than those under the D-only and P-only conditions, suggesting the integration of both cues for the perception of surface orientation. However, in these neurons, the orientation tuning sharpness under the D+P and D-only conditions was higher than that under the P-only condition, suggesting the dominance of disparity cues. After the single-unit recording experiments, muscimol was microinjected into the recording site to temporarily inactivate its function. In all three effective cases out of six microinjection experiments, discrimination of a three-dimensional (3D) surface orientation was impaired when disparity cues alone were present. In only one effective case, when a relatively large amount of muscimol was microinjected, discrimination of a 3D surface orientation was impaired even when both disparity and perspective cues were present. These results suggest that linear perspective is an important cue for representations of a 3D surface of SOS neurons in area CIP, although it is less effective than binocular disparity, and that both of these depth cues may be integrated in area CIP for the perception of surface orientation in depth.

Algorithms↗
PubMed2004

Effects of visual and auditory cues on gait in individuals with Parkinson's disease.

The purpose of this study was to determine if combining visual and auditory cues has a greater effect on the gait pattern of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) than the cues applied individually. Twenty-four individuals with idiopathic PD were recruited. Patients, while off antiparkinsonian medications, were measured on a 7.62-m walkway during two trials for each of four conditions performed in random order: without cues, with a visual cue, with an auditory cue and with both cues simultaneously. The auditory cue consisted of a metronome beat 25% faster than the subject's fastest gait speed. Brightly colored parallel lines placed along the walkway at intervals equal to 40% of a subject's height served as the visual cue. Average gait speed, cadence and stride length were calculated for each condition. Gait velocity, cadence and stride length significantly improved (p<005) when cues were used. Visual and auditory cues improved gait performance in patients with PD, but they did so in different ways. Auditory cueing significantly improved cadence, but visual cueing improved stride length. The simultaneous use of auditory and visual cues did not improve gait significantly more than each cue alone.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1995

Tradeoffs between attentional effects of spatial cues and abrupt onsets.

We determined the relative effectiveness and tradeoffs among central, peripheral, and abrupt onset cues in directing attention to a potential target character. Central cues were arrows located at the fixation point, whereas peripheral cues were arrows occurring about 3 degrees away from fixation, near the location of a potential target. These were contrasted with the abrupt onset of an ambiguous part of a character, which later was filled in to reveal a target or a distractor item. Each trial included an arrow cue and an abrupt onset cue, and both expected cue validities and cue-character SOAs were varied factorially. The results showed that, in general, abrupt onsets captured attention more effectively than either central or peripheral arrow cues. However, tradeoffs among separate cue effects indicated that the power of abrupt onsets to capture attention automatically could be overridden by a high-validity spatial cue presented in advance of the onset character. Tradeoffs between the effects of central and abrupt onset cues were additive, indicating that endogenous and exogenous cues have their main effects at different levels in the visual attention system. Peripheral cues and abrupt onsets showed mainly interactive effects, however, consistent with the idea that both types of cues have exogenous components that affect a common pool of attentional resources.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Examining inhibition of return with onset and offset cues in the multiple-cuing paradigm.

Three experiments examined inhibition of return (IOR) with onset and offset cues in a multiple-cuing paradigm. In the first two experiments, five sequential cues either appeared and remained present (onset cues) or disappeared and remained absent (offset cues). In the third experiment, the cues were either onset cues or on-off cues (appeared and then disappeared quickly after). With placeholders present, onset and offset cues produced similar declines in IOR from the most recently cued location (Experiment 1). In contrast, onset cues produced overall more IOR than on-off cues (Experiment 3). With placeholders absent (Experiment 2), no IOR was found for either onset or offset cues. The results suggest that even in a complex multiple-cuing paradigm, onsets and offsets are treated similarly by the attentional system. Furthermore, it appears that onset cues are easier to encode as previously searched than on-off cues, suggesting a role of working memory in IOR. Finally, when multiple locations are cued sequentially by onsets and offsets they must be marked by placeholders for inhibition to occur.

Attention↗
PubMed2001

Experience-dependent visual cue integration based on consistencies between visual and haptic percepts.

We study the hypothesis that observers can use haptic percepts as a standard against which the relative reliabilities of visual cues can be judged, and that these reliabilities determine how observers combine depth information provided by these cues. Using a novel visuo-haptic virtual reality environment, subjects viewed and grasped virtual objects. In Experiment 1, subjects were trained under motion relevant conditions, during which haptic and visual motion cues were consistent whereas haptic and visual texture cues were uncorrelated, and texture relevant conditions, during which haptic and texture cues were consistent whereas haptic and motion cues were uncorrelated. Subjects relied more on the motion cue after motion relevant training than after texture relevant training, and more on the texture cue after texture relevant training than after motion relevant training. Experiment 2 studied whether or not subjects could adapt their visual cue combination strategies in a context-dependent manner based on context-dependent consistencies between haptic and visual cues. Subjects successfully learned two cue combination strategies in parallel, and correctly applied each strategy in its appropriate context. Experiment 3, which was similar to Experiment 1 except that it used a more naturalistic experimental task, yielded the same pattern of results as Experiment 1 indicating that the findings do not depend on the precise nature of the experimental task. Overall, the results suggest that observers can involuntarily compare visual and haptic percepts in order to evaluate the relative reliabilities of visual cues, and that these reliabilities determine how cues are combined during three-dimensional visual perception.

Cues↗
PubMed2000

What does cue-reactivity have to offer clinical research?

This paper examines the application of the cue-reactivity paradigm as a means of studying alcohol dependence in clinical populations. Three main areas of application will be examined: cue-reactivity as a means of understanding the nature of alcohol dependence; cue-reactivity as a predictor of relapse; and cue-reactivity as a method of studying treatment effects. The study of cue exposure and cue-reactivity has a long history but it is only relatively recently that the potential of cue-reactivity as a means of understanding and treating addictive behaviours has been studied in depth. The principal advantage of cue-reactivity over other existing paradigms to study addictive behaviour is in having a solid basis in widely studied general theories of behaviour. Cue-reactivity also provides a means of measuring and unpacking the concept of craving. Craving has long been believed to represent the underlying basis for addictive behaviour, and in the majority of research studies craving has been conceptualized and measured in relatively simplistic ways. Craving has generally been viewed as a unitary phenomenon and measured using self-reported questionnaires. Such approaches have had limited explanatory value, particularly in recent psychopharmacology research. There is clearly a need to develop new paradigms to study the effects of pharmacological agents aimed at attenuating drinking behaviour. It is in this area that cue-reactivity currently offers the greatest potential. In particular, the cue-reactivity paradigm draws an important distinction between cue mediated craving and withdrawal craving. This can be viewed as similar to the distinction between generalised anxiety and anxiety provoked by phobic stimuli. However, while much is now known about the phenomenon of cue-reactivity, several aspects require further elucidation and research investment.

Alcohol-Related Disorders↗
PubMed2005

Weak and strong priming cues in bumblebee contextual learning.

Bees have the flexibility to modulate their response to a visual stimulus according to the context in which the visual stimulus is seen. They readily learn that in one context a yellow target, but not a blue one, should be approached to reach sucrose and that in another context blue, but not yellow, leads to sucrose. Here we contrast the bumblebee's ability to use two types of contextual or priming cue in deciding which of two coloured targets to approach. Bumblebees could perform this task well when the pairs of colours to be discriminated were in two different places, so that the cues associated with each place indicated whether the bees should select a blue or a yellow target. In this case the priming cues were presented concurrently with the rewarded stimuli. Priming cues, which occur a little earlier than a rewarded stimulus, seem less powerful in their ability to bias a bee's choice of rewarded stimulus. We tried with a variety of methods to train bees to use a priming colour to indicate which of two colours should be approached a few seconds later. Our only success with such sequential priming cues was when each pair of rewarded and unrewarded colours could be distinguished by additional spatial cues. Bees were trained to choose a blue-black checkerboard over a yellow-black checkerboard, after viewing a yellow priming cue, and to choose a uniform yellow target over a uniform blue one, after viewing a blue priming cue. They performed this task almost without error. To see whether bees had associated each rewarded stimulus with the relevant sequential priming cue, bees were tested with a choice between the two rewarded stimuli (the yellow target and the blue-black checkerboard). The bees' choice was biased towards the blue-black checkerboard, when the preceding priming cue was yellow, and towards the yellow target, when the priming cue was blue. We suppose that the experiment works because the presence or absence of the checkerboard provides an additional distinguishing spatial cue that can be linked to and reinforce the sequential one. Under natural conditions, as when bees follow routes, there will normally be such a synergy between spatial and sequential cues.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

Effects of displacement magnitude and direction of auditory cues on auditory spatial facilitation of visual search.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study is to examine the effects of cue error on auditory spatial facilitation (ASF) of visual search. BACKGROUND: ASF is the reduction in time needed to locate and identify a visual target when an auditory cue is presented at the location of the target. Although ASF has been shown to occur when the auditory cue coincides with the target location, it is important to determine whether facilitatory effects are also evident when the cue is displaced. METHOD: Participants performed a visual search task in the presence of an auditory cue that was presented at the center of the screen (uninformative), at the location of the target (accurate), or displaced up to 12 degrees from the target horizontally or vertically. RESULTS: Generally, displaced auditory cues reduced search times as compared with a condition in which the cue was uninformative. When the displacement was always along a single spatial dimension, the cue was as effective as a coincident cue if it was within the local visual area. However, when the dimension along which the cue was displaced varied randomly, the cue did not necessarily reduce search time and hurt performance when the visual search task was difficult. CONCLUSION: Designers of virtual audio displays should be aware that auditory cue accuracy will be affected by the difficulty of the visual task and the operators' knowledge of cue precision and reliability. APPLICATION: Findings from this study can be applied to the design of multimodal interfaces and augmented or virtual environments.

California↗
PubMed2002

Perinatal choline treatment modifies the effects of a visuo-spatial attractive cue upon spatial memory in naive adult rats.

The improvement in memory functions by choline supplementation is hypothesized to be due to increased synthesis and release of acetylcholine in the brain. We have found previously that combined pre- and postnatal choline supplementation results in long-lasting facilitation of spatial memory in juvenile rats when training was conducted in presence of a local salient cue. The present work aims to analyze the effects of peri- and postnatal choline supplementation on spatial abilities of naive adult rats. Treated rats were trained in various cued procedures of the Morris navigation task of 5 months of age. The treatment had a specific effect of reducing the escape latency of the rats when the platform was at a fixed location in space and indicated by a suspended cue. This effect was associated with an improved spatial memory when the cue and the platform were removed. In this condition, the control rats showed impaired spatial discrimination following the removal of the target cue, most likely due to an overshadowing of the distant environmental cues. This impairment was not observed in the treated rats. Further training with the suspended cue at unpredictable places in the pool revealed longer escape latencies in the control than in the treated rats suggesting that this procedure induced a selective perturbation of the normal but not of the treated rats. A special probe trial with the cue at an irrelevant location and no escape platform revealed a significant bias of the control rats towards the cue, but in treated rats towards the uncued spatial escape position. This behavioral dissociation suggests that a salient cue associated with the target induces an alternative "non spatial" guidance strategy in normal rats, with the risk of overshadowing attention towards more distant spatial cues. As a consequence, the improved escape in the presence of the cue in the treated rats is associated with a stronger memory of the spatial position following disappearance of the cue. This and previous observations suggest that a specific spatial attentional process relies on the buffering of highly salient visual cues to facilitate integration of their relative position in the environment.

Acetylcholine↗
PubMed2002

Retarded disengagement from pain cues: the effects of pain catastrophizing and pain expectancy.

This paper reports an experimental investigation of engagement with and disengagement from a threatening cue of pain. As most paradigms in pain research only provide an overall index of attentional deployment by pain-related information, a new paradigm was developed that allowed an independent investigation of engagement with and disengagement from pain cues. Forty pain-free volunteers performed a cueing task in which they had to detect pain targets and tone targets as quickly and as accurately as possible. The target stimuli were preceded by pain cues (the word 'pain'), tone cues (the word 'tone'), or neutral cues (a series of the character 'X') at stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA: stimulus interval between cue onset and target onset) levels of 100, 500, or 900 ms. There was no contingency between the type of cue and the type of target. Catastrophic thinking about pain and the predictive value of the cues were assessed by self-reports. Results can be summarized as follows: When a cue correctly primed a target, attention was optimally engaged in the identification of the target irrespective of the threatening context of the cue or target. However, when pain was cued and did not occur, there was retardation in disengagement from the pain cue. This retardation was more pronounced and extended across time in those high in catastrophic thinking about pain. On examination it appeared that catastrophic thinking about pain may operate by a protection of the belief that the cue for pain is a valid one, despite experience to the contrary.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed2003

Cue-induced behavioural activation: a novel model of alcohol craving?

RATIONALE: Alcohol-associated cues elicit craving in human addicts but little is known about craving mechanisms. Current animal models focus on relapse and this may confound the effect of environmental cues. OBJECTIVES. To develop a model to study the effects of environmental cues on alcohol consumption in animals not experiencing withdrawal or relapse. METHODS: Rats were trained to orally self-administer an alcohol (5% w/v)/saccharin (0.2%) solution 30 min a day for 20 days. After stable responding on a free choice between alcohol/saccharin and water, rats were exposed to 5, 10 or 15 min of alcohol-associated cues or 5 min of non-alcohol associated cues. The effect of a 5-min cue was measured after a 10-day break from training or pre-treatment with 0.03, 0.1 or 1 mg/kg naltrexone. RESULTS: Rats given 5 min of alcohol-associated cues responded significantly more on the active lever (26% increase) and consumed more alcohol as verified by increased blood alcohol levels (8.9 mM versus control 7.5 mM). Ten or 15 min of cues did not change alcohol consumption and 5 min in a novel environment decreased response by 66%. After a 10-day break in training, 5 min of alcohol-associated cues still increased alcohol consumption (29% increase) and the cue effect could be dose-dependently blocked by naltrexone (143% decrease at 0.03 mg/kg). CONCLUSIONS: Cue-induced behavioural activation was specific to alcohol cues, reproducible, persistent and could be blocked by naltrexone, and its correlation with human self-report of craving makes it a potentially useful model for studying alcohol craving.

Alcohol Drinking↗