Remotely Presenting Alcohol-predicting Cues Avoids Confound of Experimenter as First Cue and Reveals Sex-specific Behaviors that Predict the Rate and Amount of Alcohol Consumption

Examining the neurobiological systems that govern alcohol cue-induced craving is crucial for creating new strategies to address alcohol use disorders. In laboratory settings, human experimenters administer alcohol, but the cues linked to the experimenter are typically excluded from the experimental design. While researchers have made significant progress in understanding alcohol cue-induced behavior and underlying neurobiology, especially concerning repetitive cues throughout a single daily alcohol self-administration session, there remains a limited understanding of how responses to alcohol availability cues predict subsequent alcohol consumption.

In this study, mice were daily exposed to auditory cues that signaled 2 hours of access to either alcohol or water using drinking-in-the-dark (DID) methods. A control group experienced cues without additional manipulation. Crucially, these cues were initiated remotely from outside the animal facility, ensuring the experimenter was not the first cue predicting ethanol availability.

The primary variables of interest included head direction, location within the home cage, and movement velocity. Surprisingly, during the cue period, no significant differences were observed between groups in any of these measures, despite significant changes over time. Nevertheless, the researchers identified numerous significant correlations between behaviors and drinking variables.

They observed a significant positive association between ambulatory velocity during cues and subsequent total alcohol consumption (R2=0.14; p < 0.05).