In contrast to the often enhanced sensitivity to the rewarding properties of natural rewards and drugs of abuse seen in adolescents relative to adults, their sensitivity to the aversive consequences of drugs (and perhaps even to some natural rewards) appears to be attenuated. For instance, separate studies within the same experimental series found that, relative to adults, adolescents exhibited both greater sensitivity to nicotine-induced CPP, but weaker aversive responses to nicotine when indexed either via conditioned taste aversions (CTA) to nicotine (Shram et al, 2006) or via conditioned place aversions to higher nicotine doses (Torres et al., 2008). Adolescents may show not only enhanced positive rewarding effects but also attenuated aversive consequences with other drugs as well. Recently, we have used CTA procedures to assess the aversive consequences of ethanol, with adolescents requiring much higher doses than adults in order to establish a significant ethanol-induced CTA to a paired CS solution (Anderson et al., 2008a, b; Varlinskaya et al., 2006). Furthermore, Infurna & Spear (1979) showed an attenuated efficacy of amphetamine in inducing CTA in adolescence, which contrasts with the
