The data presented herein are novel in-depth analyses of previously published data (Linsenbardt and Lapish, 2015). In this previous study, we assessed neural firing at longer time-scales (e.g., >1 min), which is better suited to detect pharmacologically driven effects. The goal of the current study was to examine neural activity at shorter time scales (e.g., <1 min), to assess decision-making dynamics. To first determine if the signals reflecting the intention to drink alcohol were present in the PFC, the current study evaluated neural activity across populations of neurons recorded during alcohol drinking in well-trained, high drinking, rats. We were particularly interested in the impact of alcohol-associated cues on drinking intent, and the role of family history of alcohol drinking on these cue-elicited decisions, as these factors have been shown to be critically important in human clinical studies (see above) and were previously unexplored. Thus, we used Indiana alcohol-preferring (P) rats, which are a well-validated preclinical model of familial risk for excessive drinking (i.e., “family-history positive”), and a comparison strain with no family history, Wistar rats. We hypothesized that the intention
