Neuroscience JoVE (Open Access) Citable · DOI

A Procedure to Observe Context-induced Renewal of Pavlovian-conditioned Alcohol-seeking Behavior in Rats

Name: A Procedure to Observe Context-induced Renewal of Pavlovian-conditioned Alcohol-seeking Behavior in Rats
Uploaded: 2026-06-17
Duration: 13 min 24 s
Description: Environmental contexts in which drugs of abuse are consumed can trigger craving, a subjective Pavlovian-conditioned response that can facilitate ...

DOI: 10.3791/51898-v

What you'll learn

✓ Implement Pavlovian discrimination training to establish alcohol-context associations in rats
✓ Execute extinction training and context-induced renewal testing protocols
✓ Interpret behavioral renewal as evidence of context-dependent relapse mechanisms
✓ Apply this model to study environmental triggers in substance-seeking behavior

Protocol

A procedure to study the capacity of an alcohol associated environmental context to trigger the renewal of alcohol-seeking behavior in rats is described.

Difficulty

advanced

Total time

~4–6 weeks per rat (habituation through final test)

Model organism

Rat (Sprague Dawley or Lewis strain implied)

Biosafety

BSL-1

Steps

Habituate rats to laboratory testing room

Allow rats to acclimate to the testing facility and conditioning chambers to reduce novelty-induced stress and establish baseline behavior. This step ensures stable responding during subsequent training phases.

▶ 01:39

Conduct Pavlovian discrimination training

Pair distinct environmental contexts (CS+/CS−) with ethanol or saline delivery to establish conditioned approach and seeking behavior. Rats learn to discriminate alcohol-associated cues from neutral cues.

▶ 04:42

Extinguish conditioned responding via ethanol cessation

Remove ethanol delivery while maintaining contextual exposure to reduce conditioned alcohol-seeking behavior. This simulates abstinence or treatment conditions.

▶ 09:12

Test context-induced renewal of seeking behavior

Reexpose rats to the original alcohol-paired context after extinction to measure spontaneous recovery of alcohol-seeking. Renewal indicates the persistent influence of environmental context on relapse.

▶ 10:25

Analyze and interpret behavioral renewal results

Quantify approach and seeking responses during renewal test and compare to extinction baseline. Results demonstrate context-dependent relapse mechanisms relevant to addiction.

▶ 11:18

💬 Comments coming soon