Chunk #58 — Locomotor Activating, Autonomic and Central Electrophysiological Responses to Alcohol Predictive of Risk — Heart rate and autonomic stimulation
of the 90 min test session). The subsequent study (Bell et al. 2007) reported that alcohol self-administration during the peri-adolescent window of development (post-natal days 30 through 72) resulted in lower basal heart rate when tested during adulthood. These authors also reported that the level of heart rate induced by alcohol self-administration seen in the peri-adolescent alcohol-experienced and peri-adolescent alcohol-naïve P rats did not differ (i.e., with the decreased basal heart rate displayed by the peri-adolescent alcohol-experienced P rats, the magnitude of heart rate increase induced by alcohol consumption was greater in this group compared with the peri-adolescent alcohol-naïve group). The most recent study (Bell et al. 2008) revealed that the heart rate increases induced by alcohol consumption could be conditioned to the test environment not only during the pre-test session, during which only water was available, but also during the usual test session when alcohol was normally available but was deprived from one group of animals.
