Anesthesia-inducing drugs also induce conditioned taste aversions

Animals learn to reduce their intake of a tastant when its ingestion is followed by the administration of an anesthesia-inducing drug. To determine the nature of this intake suppression, the current study examined whether ketamine/xylazine (Experiment 1) and pentobarbital (Experiment 2) also conditionally reduce taste palatability. Using lick pattern analysis, we found that pairing saccharin with either drug reduced total licks, lick cluster size, and initial lick rate. Given that both lick cluster size and initial lick rate are indices of palatability, this pattern of results indicates that anesthesia-inducing drugs also induce conditioned taste aversions.