A Novel Procedure for Evaluating the Reinforcing Properties of Tastants in Laboratory Rats: Operant Intraoral Self-administration

The overall goal of this procedure is to apply principles of operant intravenous drug self-administration to the investigation of operant self-administration of sweet solutions delivered by intraoral infusion. This is accomplished by first surgically implanting rats with an IO cannula and a head cap. The second step of the procedure is to select the sugar of interest and prepare appropriate concentrations of the solution for self-administration in operant chambers.

The third step of the procedure is to place rats in the operant chambers, attach their IO cannulas to the appropriate tubing, and allow the animals to self-administer IO infusions of the suite solution using different concentrations and different schedules of reinforcement. The final step of the procedure is to remove the rats from the operant chambers and flush their cannulas with water in preparation for the following self-administration session. Ultimately, results can be obtained that show that rats will acquire and maintain self-administration of sweet solutions, and that their behavior is sensitive to changes in the concentration of the solution and the schedule of reinforcement employed through IO self-administration.