Mescaline and homoveratrylamine as discriminative stimuli in rats
Bueno, O.F.
Acta Physiologica Latino Americana 25(1): 77-79
1975
ISSN/ISBN: 0001-6764 PMID: 1221818 Document Number: 88021
The present paper shows the results of experiments using mescaline, homoveratrylamine and saline in rats to determine whether both drugs can serve as discriminative stimuli when either one is paired with saline, and whether discriminative responding can occur when mescaline (trimethoxyphenylethylamine) and homoveratrylamine (dimethoxyphenylethylamine) are paired. The drugs were injected i.p. 30 min before the sessions. The rats learned to differentiate mescaline from saline, beginning after the 10th injection; at the end of the experiment they were scoring near 80% of correct responses under either mescaline or saline. The results with homoveratrylamine are, however, less clear; the animals performed a large percentage of correct responses when under the action of the drug but scored near the chance level of 50% when under saline. Discriminative responding occurred when both methoxyamines were paired. Rats can discriminate mescaline from saline, mescaline from homoveratrylamine and possibly homoveratrylamine from saline.