Baclofen alters gustatory discrimination capabilities and induces a conditioned taste aversion (CTA)

摘要

BackgroundStudies intending to measure drug-induced changes in learning and memory are challenged to parse out the effects of drugs on sensory, motor, and associative systems in the brain. In the context of conditioned taste aversion (CTA), drugs that alter the sensorium of subjects and affect their ability to taste and/or feel malaise may limit the ability of investigators to make conclusions about associative effects of these substances. Since the GABAergic system is implicated in inhibition, the authors were hopeful to use the GABA agonist, baclofen (BAC), to enhance extinction of a CTA, but first a preliminary evaluation of BAC's peripheral effects on animals' sensorium had to be completed due to a lack of published literature in this area.