Pavlovian Cue Conditioning
Objective: To determine whether intra-accumbens amphetamine enhances the conditioned incentive salience of a Pavlovian reward cue (30-second light) associated with sucrose pellets, and whether this enhancement reflects changes in reward 'wanting' independent of 'liking' or response reinforcement
This is a Pavlovian Cue Conditioning protocol using rat as the model organism. The procedure involves 5 procedural steps, 3 equipment items, 3 materials. Extracted from a 2000 paper published in Journal of Neuroscience.
Model and subjects
rat • Not specified • unknown • Not specified • Not specified
Study window
Estimated timing pending
Core workflow
Lever press training • Pavlovian cue conditioning • Microinjection administration
Primary readouts
- Cue-elicited increase in sucrose-associated lever pressing
- Instrumental responding rate during test sessions
- Positive hedonic reaction patterns to sucrose (taste reactivity)
- Dose-dependent effects of amphetamine on cue-triggered incentive motivation
Key equipment and reagents
Use this page as an execution guide, then fall back to the source paper whenever you need exact exclusions, dosing details, or assay-specific caveats.
Confirm first
- Verify the animal model, intervention setup, and collection timepoints against the source paper.
- Check that every direct vendor link matches the exact specification your lab plans to run.
Use the page like this
- Work through the protocol steps in order and use the inline vendor chips only when you need to source or verify an item.
- Jump to Experimental Context for readouts, data shape, and analysis flow before planning downstream analysis.
Protocol Steps
Start here. The step list is optimized for running the experiment, with direct vendor links available inline when you need to source a cited item.
Lever press training
Rats were trained to press one of two levers to obtain sucrose pellets as reinforcement
Note: Initial instrumental training phase
View evidence from paper
“Rats were first trained to press one of two levers to obtain sucrose pellets.”
Pavlovian cue conditioning
Rats were separately conditioned to associate a 30-second light cue with free sucrose pellets presented without requiring any instrumental response
Note: Conducted separately from lever training to establish pure Pavlovian association
View evidence from paper
“They were separately conditioned to associate a Pavlovian cue (30 sec light) with free sucrose pellets.”
Microinjection administration
On test days, rats received bilateral microinjection of either vehicle or amphetamine at one of four doses into the nucleus accumbens shell
Note: Bilateral injection; four dose conditions tested: 0.0, 2.0, 10.0, or 20.0 µg/0.5 µl
View evidence from paper
“On test days, the rats received bilateral microinjection of intra-accumbens vehicle or amphetamine (0.0, 2.0, 10.0, or 20.0 µg/0.5 µl)”
Test session - lever pressing without reinforcement
Following microinjection, lever pressing was tested in the absence of any reinforcement contingency while the Pavlovian light cue was freely presented at intervals throughout the session
Note: Pure conditioned incentive paradigm - no sucrose reinforcement or cue-contingent reinforcement during test
View evidence from paper
“lever pressing was tested in the absence of any reinforcement contingency, while the Pavlovian cue alone was freely presented at intervals throughout the session.”
Taste reactivity measurement
Hedonic impact of sucrose was measured using taste reactivity to assess positive hedonic reaction patterns elicited by sucrose
Note: Used to determine whether amphetamine increases sucrose 'liking' versus 'wanting'
View evidence from paper
“Using the taste reactivity measure of hedonic impact, it was shown that intra-accumbens amphetamine failed to increase positive hedonic reaction patterns elicited by sucrose”