Long-term effects of barbital on spontaneous activity of rats trained to use the drug as a discriminative stimulus.

This investigation sought to determine if the discriminative stimulus properties of barbital are reflected in the pattern of spontaneous motor activity induced by the drug. Rats were trained in a Skinner box to discriminate the effects of sodium barbital (80 mg/kg), injected 60 min prior to training, from those of saline. Half of the animals (Group I) were taught the drug discrimination by rewarding them for bar pressing only when they were in the drug condition. The other half of the animals (Group II) were rewarded only in the absence of the effects of barbital. Spontaneous motor activity was monitored during the 20 min period from 40--60 min after injection of the drug or saline. After several months of drug discrimination training, the patterns of spontaneous activity displayed by all animals suggested that the treatments had become conditioned to signal the forthcoming availability or non-availability of food in the Skinner box. The data also suggested that chronic exposure to barbital may induced adaptations which allowed the drug to increase spontaneous motor activity.