Vapor inhalation of alcohol in rats.

Alcohol dependence constitutes a neuroadaptive state critical for understanding alcoholism, and various methods have been utilized to induce alcohol dependence in animals, one of which is alcohol vapor exposure. Alcohol vapor inhalation provides certain advantages over other chronic alcohol exposure procedures that share the ultimate goal of producing alcohol dependence in rats. Chronic alcohol vapor inhalation allows the experimenter to control the dose, duration, and pattern of alcohol exposure. Also, this procedure facilitates testing of somatic and motivational aspects of alcohol dependence. Chronic exposure to alcohol vapor produces increases in alcohol-drinking behavior, increases in anxiety-like behavior, and reward deficits in rats. Alcohol vapor inhalation as a laboratory protocol is flexible, and the parameters of this procedure can be adjusted to accommodate the specific aims of different experiments. This unit describes the options available to investigators using this procedure for dependence induction, when different options are more or less appropriate, and the implications of each. Copyright 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.