The withdrawal response was measured using the HIC, which is elicited by lifting the animal by the tail and looking for convulsive signs (Crabbe et al. 1991). Signs are rated from 0 (absent) to 7 (severe) and in part determined by whether the sign was elicited by simply lifting the animal or by spinning the animal in a 180–360° arc. At T−30min and T−10 min, baseline withdrawal measures were taken. At T0, animals were administered 4.0 g/kg ethanol, an anesthetic dose in all animals. Withdrawal signs were measured beginning at T+2 h and continuing every hour until T+12 h. Peak withdrawal signs are generally seen 6–8 h after ethanol administration (Metten et al. 1998a, b). Data are reported either as the corrected area under the curve (CAUC) or the corrected maximum response (CMAX); the correction is obtained by subtracting the average baseline value from the post-drug values.
