Anxiety-like state associates with taste to produce conditioned taste aversion

Background The interactions among experience, emotion, and memory are considered to be instrumental in the ontogeny and maintenance of acquired emotional and behavioral disorders (e.g., phobias). Here we address the question whether an anxiety-like state can associate with taste to produce conditioned taste aversion (CTA). Methods We have used an anxiogenic agent, the 5-HT2C receptor agonist meta-chlorophenylpiperazine (mCPP), to induce an anxiety-like emotional state in rats after consumption of an unfamiliar tastant. Results The anxiogenic agent induced CTA. The mCPP-induced CTA could be prevented by concomitant administration of ethanol, which is known to reverse mCPP-induced anxiety-like behavior, at a concentration that had no effect on CTA memory. In contrast, ethanol did not prevent LiCl-induced CTA. Administration of mCPP before the consumption of the tastant had no effect on the preference for that tastant. Conclusions Taken together, these results indicate that anxiety-like state can serve as the unconditioned stimulus in CTA training. This finding may be relevant to the ontogeny of pathologies involving food aversion.