Repeated Cycles of Binge-Like Ethanol Drinking in Male C57BL/6J Mice Augments Subsequent Voluntary Ethanol Intake But Not Other Dependence-Like Phenotypes

Recently, procedures have been developed to model specific facets of human alcohol abuse disorders, including those that model excessive binge-like drinking (i.e., “drinking in the dark”, or DID procedures) and excessive dependence-like drinking (i.e., intermittent ethanol vapor exposure). Similar neuropeptide systems modulate excessive ethanol drinking stemming from both procedures, raising the possibility that both paradigms are actually modeling the same phenotypes and triggering the same central neuroplasticity. Therefore, the goal of the present project was to study the effects of a history of binge-like ethanol drinking, using DID procedures, on phenotypes that have previously been described with procedures to model dependence-like drinking