The Relation Between Free-Choice Alcohol Consumption and Susceptibility to Audiogenic Seizures

Abstract

An experiment was designed to test the prediction, based on a consideration of 2 current approaches to the problem of voluntary alcohol consumption in rats, that there exists a positive functional relationship between free-choice alcohol intake and susceptibility to audiogenic seizures. The predicted relationship was demonstrated to hold for absolute intake of a 5% alcohol solution covering a 24-hour period 8 days previous to the seizure testing, for total intake over a 7-day period ending 48 hours before the seizure testing, and for intake on the day immediately following the seizure testing. There was evidence suggesting an increase in intake following the seizure testing, though the necessary control group for interpreting this increase was lacking. There was no evidence of an effect of alcohol consumption on seizure susceptibility; none was expected, since seizure tests followed 48- and 72-hour periods during which alcohol was not consumed. Although it is reasonable to conceive of animals which exhibit seizures as qualitatively different from those which do not, the results of the present study do not support this point of view. Rather, the form of the relationships obtained in this experiment suggests that "seizure susceptibility" is a continuously distributed variable and that seizure latency is a valid measure of it.