Discriminative stimulus control with imipramine: transfer to other anti-depressants.

Discriminative stimulus control with the tricyclic anti-depressant imipramine was attempted in three groups of rats; two of which were subjected to artificially stressful conditions. Only the unstressed group were shown capable of discriminating between the stimulus properties of intraperitoneal 10 mg/kg imipramine and saline in a two-lever, food-motivated operant task. Discriminative performance with decreasing doses of imipramine was shown to be dose-responsive. The ability to discriminate the interoceptive cue produced by imipramine was observed to transfer to a 10 mg/kg dose of both amitriptyline and desmethylimipramine. The results suggest a common tricyclic anti-depressant cueing property.