or would they work harder in an operant task to obtain access to alcohol (Green and Grahame 2008)? It is reassuring to find that the animals with high preference genotypes indeed would work harder in oral operant self-administration studies. Another commonly employed behavioral assay depends on Pavlovian conditioning. When an alcohol injection is paired with drinking a novel fluid, animals will sometimes gradually develop an aversion for the novel fluid. This conditioned taste aversion is taken as an index of ethanol's hedonic stimulus properties, and sensitivity to this effect of alcohol has been shown by some to correspond with avoidance of alcohol intake in low alcohol consuming lines. Thus, aversive effects of relatively high doses of alcohol may tend to limit consumption to a greater extent in non-preferring genotypes. Finally, if alcohol injections are paired with a novel location and the animal is subsequently given a choice of locations, it may show a conditioned place preference, and high preference drinking genotypes were more likely to do so than non-preferring genotypes. Overall, these results suggest that preference drinking is a reasonable model of ethanol's reinforcing effects (Green and Grahame 2008).
