After a full recovery from surgery, animals were given a period of one week of habituation/acclimation before electrophysiological recordings. Animals were habituated to the handling required for incremental lowering of tetrodes before the task, and also to navigating the 2CAP environment with the tether connecting the implanted electrode array to the recording hardware. After this habituation period, ≈3 d of 2CAP reinforced with 10% alcohol (v/v) were conducted while electrophysiology was recorded using a 96-channel electrophysiological recording system (Neuralynx). Animals were then given approximately three water sessions where the sippers contained water. A primary goal of these water sessions was to make a direct connection to studies of brain function in humans, wherein alcohol-associated cues are presented in the absence of access to alcohol (Kareken et al., 2010). Electrodes were lowered 50–100 µm before each recording session to collect data from new neuronal ensembles. Following the completion of behavioral testing and electrophysiological recordings, placements were verified via histology (reported in Linsenbardt and Lapish, 2015).
