Alcohol Cues Invigorate Aversion-Resistant Alcohol Drinking
- 1University of Minnesota
Abstract
Background: Alcohol use disorder is characterized by continued alcohol use despite negative consequences, also known as aversion-resistant drinking. Alcohol related cues can invigorate motivation to seek and consume alcohol. It is currently unknown whether alcohol related cues can invigorate drinking despite negative consequences. Materials and Methods: Long-Evans rats were trained in a discriminative stimulus (DS) task with cues predicting the available of alcohol reward. They were then tested in the task for aversion-resistant drinking by measuring consumption of alcohol adulterated with increasing concentrations of quinine. As a control for an environment free of reward-related cues, rats were also tested for aversion-resistant drinking in the home cage. Results: We found that rats displayed robust aversion-resistant drinking in the DS task. When we compared alcohol consumption in the task with home cage consumption, we found that rats were more aversion-resistant in the task than in the home cage. We also found that individual differences in aversion-resistant drinking were correlated within behavioral context (i.e. home cage or DS task) but not between the home cage and the DS task. Conclusions: We found that aversion-resistant drinking is invigorated during cue-induced alcohol seeking relative to free drinking without explicit cues. Home cage quinine-sensitivity is unrelated to quinine-sensitivity in the presence of cues. This suggests that cues motivate drinking despite negative consequences in a way that is unique from aversion-resistance driven by drinking history. While many behavioral measures use cues and ultimately test aversion-resistant drinking, this is the first explicit test of cue-evoked aversion-resistant drinking.
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BibTeX
@misc{bauer2026alcohol,
title = {{Alcohol Cues Invigorate Aversion-Resistant Alcohol Drinking}},
author = {M. R. Bauer and J. M. Richard},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = jul,
doi = {10.64898/2026.07.14.738545},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.14.738545v2},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Alcohol Cues Invigorate Aversion-Resistant Alcohol Drinking
AU - M. R. Bauer
AU - J. M. Richard
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/07/14
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.07.14.738545
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.14.738545v2
AB - Background: Alcohol use disorder is characterized by continued alcohol use despite negative consequences, also known as aversion-resistant drinking. Alcohol related cues can invigorate motivation to seek and consume alcohol. It is currently unknown whether alcohol related cues can invigorate drinking despite negative consequences. Materials and Methods: Long-Evans rats were trained in a discriminative stimulus (DS) task with cues predicting the available of alcohol reward. They were then tested in the task for aversion-resistant drinking by measuring consumption of alcohol adulterated with increasing concentrations of quinine. As a control for an environment free of reward-related cues, rats were also tested for aversion-resistant drinking in the home cage. Results: We found that rats displayed robust aversion-resistant drinking in the DS task. When we compared alcohol consumption in the task with home cage consumption, we found that rats were more aversion-resistant in the task than in the home cage. We also found that individual differences in aversion-resistant drinking were correlated within behavioral context (i.e. home cage or DS task) but not between the home cage and the DS task. Conclusions: We found that aversion-resistant drinking is invigorated during cue-induced alcohol seeking relative to free drinking without explicit cues. Home cage quinine-sensitivity is unrelated to quinine-sensitivity in the presence of cues. This suggests that cues motivate drinking despite negative consequences in a way that is unique from aversion-resistance driven by drinking history. While many behavioral measures use cues and ultimately test aversion-resistant drinking, this is the first explicit test of cue-evoked aversion-resistant drinking.
ER -