Reducing the time needed to conduct conditioned place preference testing.

Abstract

The objective of the present experiment was to demonstrate whether four days of twice-a-day conditioned place conditioning produces a preference that is equivalent to that produced by using eight days of once-a-day training. Two doses of the amphetamine-like stimulant drug cathinone (0.2 and 1.6 mg/kg) were selected to demonstrate the effectiveness of twice-a-day (morning-vehicle; afternoon-drug pairings) conditioning. The 0.2 mg/kg dose of cathinone failed to affect the expression of place preference, whereas the 1.6 mg/kg dose produced a significant (p less than 0.002) shift in CPP from baseline when compared to previous measurements. These results demonstrate that twice-a-day pairings over four days effectively shorten the total duration of training without changing the development of place preference produced by once-a-day over eight conditioning day schedule.