Stress has been shown to facilitate the rewarding effects of drugs of abuse

including ethanol (ETOH). We have previously shown that retrieval of fear

memory facilitates subsequent ETOH consumption in ETOH withdrawn rats.

Given that the rewarding properties of ETOH might be involved in such

increased ETOH intake, the effect of retrieval of fear memory on the rewarding

properties of ethanol was assessed using the conditioned place preference

(CPP) paradigm. Male Wistar rats were allowed to consume an ethanolcontaining

liquid diet (6% v/v) for 14 days. After 72 h of withdrawal, the preconditioning

session for CPP was performed (10 min). The next day, one group

of rats was exposed to 3 footshocks (0.4mA, 3s, 30 s intershock interval). The

CPP conditioning began 24 h after fear training and rats received 4 saline and 4

ETOH pairings (1 g/kg, ip) on alternating days into the assigned CPP

compartment for 8 min. One day after of the last ETOH injection, the contextual

fear response was evaluated 2 h prior to the CPP test (10 min). Consistent with

previous work, ETOH withdrawn rats showed an enhanced contextual fear

response. ETOH produced neither CPP nor place aversion in both control and

ETOH withdrawn non-fear trained rats. However, significant CPP for ETOH was

induced following retrieval of contextual fear memory in ETOH withdrawn rats.

These data suggest that an aversive memory can affect the motivational

properties of ETOH in withdrawn rats.