Prepared for " Highlight " Section December 1, 2005 Conditioned Taste Aversion: an Annotated Bibliography

The highlight for November is from Dr. Linda Parker from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. For over 30 years, Dr. Parker and her colleagues have provided a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the basis of conditioned taste aversion learning. Beginning with her published account of the differences between the conditioned aversions elicited by amphetamine and LiCl-paired flavors, she convincingly demonstrated that while both drugs conditioned an avoidance of the drug-paired flavor, only LiCl induced a change in the hedonic response to the taste, in this case a conditioned disgust reaction. This and her subsequent work have revealed that drugs generally assumed to be rewarding via other preparations (e.g., place preference conditioning) result in a conditioned flavor avoidance but do not condition an aversion. In her highlight, she describes this early work and the implications that it has had for reformulating the views on the basis of aversion learning (from nausea to novelty to stress). She further describes how nausea and avoidance can be dissociated (by chemical challenges and by electrolytic lesions) and the implications for the use of the conditioned disgust reaction to assay nausea selectively. She further notes the potential application of the conditioned disgust reaction in human therapeutic settings. This highlight summarizes a long-standing research career of someone who has challenged prevailing views on “aversion” learning and who has forced its reconceptualization.