Abstract
Pretreatment by a psychoactive drug can greatly attenuate the conditioning of gustatory avoidance by that drug. Although such findings have been interpreted in terms of tolerance, alternative explantions are possible. In a series of experiments, it was found that pretreatments with morphine or amphetamine massed at 24-h intervals were no more effective in attenuating conditioning than pretreatments spaced at 120-h intervals, but pretreatment with morphine provided more persistent protection against subsequent conditioning by itself than did amphetamine in a comparable previous experiment. The similarity of massed and spaced pretreatment effects can be interpreted without appealing to tolerance as a factor, but the greater persistence of morphine pretreatment implicates tolerance as a mechanism.
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Cappell, H., Le Blanc, A.E. Parametric investigations of the effects of prior exposure to amphetamine and morphine on conditioned gustatory aversion. Psychopharmacology 51, 265–271 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00431634
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00431634