Conditioned taste aversions: From poisons to pain to drugs of abuse

摘要

Learning what to eat and what not to eat is fundamental to our well-being, quality of life and survival. In particular, the acquisition of conditioned taste aversions (CTAs) protects all animals (including humans) against ingesting foods that contain poisons or toxins. Counterintuitively, CTAs can also develop in situations where we know with absolute certainty that the food did not cause the subsequent aversive systemic effect. Recent non-human animal research, analyzing palatability shifts, indicates that a wider range of stimuli than traditionally acknowledged can induce CTAs. This article integrates these new findings with a reappraisal of some known characteristics of CTA, and presents a novel conceptual analysis that is broader and more comprehensive than other accounts of CTA learning.