State-dependent learning produced by chlordiazepoxide and its transfer at different dose levels.

In Experiment I, the rat was given 15 mg/kg of chlordiazepoxide (CDP) and trained on a black-white discrimination task, motivated by electric shocks; the same animal, when given saline, was treated similarly with the reversed cue relationship on different and usually alternate sessions. Training was continued until a learning criterion under both drug and saline states and then tested with only one of five testing CDP doses (2.5, 5, 10, 20 and 25 mg/kg). During training, the rat made more errors under drug than under saline but there were little differences in starting and running times at least during the last sessions. In the transfer test, choice responses showed a bi-directional gradient around the training dose as in stimulus generalization gradient. Experiment II was identical to Experiment I, except that the same drug was tested at all five transfer doses and the resulting transfer gradient was a simple monotonic increasing function of dose levels. Discrepancy between the two experiments was discussed.