| Abstract: | Male hooded rats were trained to discriminate the taste of a saccharin solution from that of water by responding with a lever on one side of a food cup following 20 licks (500 μl) of a 0.002 M saccharin solution and responding with a lever on the alternate side following 20 licks (500 μl) of water for food reinforcement. All of the rats learned this discrimination reliably. The gustatory stimulus produced by saccharin was concentration-dependent. Sucrose (0.01–0.1 M) and dextrose (0.1–0.5 M) produced a concentration-dependent generalization to the saccharin taste. Solutions of sodium chloride (0.15 M), citric acid (0.01 M), caffeine citrate (0.01 M), and quinine hydrochloride (0.00001–0.01 M) did not produce saccharin-like taste. Generalization of sweet compounds and lack of generalization of salty, sour, and bitter compounds to the saccharin taste suggest that discrimination of the nonnutritive sweetener, saccharin, by the rat may possibly be used as a bioassay to detect and quantitate the sweetening property of new compounds. |
