Recent experiments have suggested that adolescents may be particularly sensitive to ethanol’s positive motivational reinforcing effects. Philpot et al. (2003) found ethanol-mediated conditioned place preference in rats at the transition between late adolescence and adulthood (P45) but not in adults (P60). Also, Fernández Vidal et al. (2003) trained adolescent rats (P30-33) to discriminate a moderate ethanol toxic state from a non-drug state in a procedure that involved rats having access to sucrose after ethanol (0.5 g/kg) or sham intubations. Unexpectedly, sucrose seeking and intake behaviors increased in those animals where sucrose availability had been signaled by ethanol. These experiments indicate that adolescents may perceive the postabsorptive consequences of ethanol as reinforcing. However, ethanol-mediated conditioned preferences in adolescents (i.e., P28-42) comparable to those found in neonates (Cheslock et al., 2001) and infant rats (Molina et al., 2006; 2007) have yet to be clearly demonstrated.
