Abstract
Rats were confined and given signaled shock on one side of a shuttlebox and unsignaled shock on the other side. Preference tests revealed that rats injected with the opiate antagonist naloxone during training showed no subsequent side preference, whereas saline control rats preferred the signaled side. The second and third experiments showed that this naloxone effect could not be due to state-dependent learning (generalization decrement), interference with exploratory activity, or the drug making the signal aversive. The results suggest that release of endogenous analgesic substances may constitute a central nervous system preparatory response which mediates a preference for signaled shock.
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Part of this research was presented at the November 1977 meeting of the Psychonomic Society in Washington, D. C. I would like to thank R. C. Bolles and I. Bernstein for their comments. Naloxone for the first experiment was supplied by John Wenger. Naloxone for Experiments 2 and 3 was generously provided by Endo Laboratories. This research was supported by NSF Grant NBS-76-19912 made to Robert C. Bolles.
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Fanselow, M.S. Naloxone attenuates rat’s preference for signaled shock. Psychobiology 7, 70–74 (1979). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03326621
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03326621