THE INFLUENCE OF PROLONGED AD LIBITUM ETHANOL CONSUMPTION ON EMOTIONAL BEHAVIOR IN RATS WITH DIFFERENT LEVELS OF ALCOHOL MOTIVATION

Experimental studies of behavioral disorders due to the consumption of psychoactive substances through their realistic modeling by laboratory animals is becoming more and more relevant against the background of the inevitable psychogenic imperative associated with the war in Ukraine. In this aspect, emotional behavior is the resulting factor that generalizes and accompanies the mechanisms of psycho-emotional disorders, which are considered the most common mental diseases in the world. Under conditions of ethanol consumption ad libitum, with the use of ethological observation methods, we studied the character of the emotional response of non-linear white rats of young reproductive age in unusual stressful situations of the “elevated plus-maze”, “dark-light chamber” and “ tail fixation”. The aim was to study the effect of long-term alcoholization on the level of anxiety and tendency to depressivelike behavior in animals, depending on the severity of alcohol motivation according to the ethanol preference index and the average daily individual dose of its consumption. As a result of a complex analysis of the behavior of rats with different levels of alcohol motivation under the conditions of free access to ethanol, it was found that there is no significant modulation of emotional activity. This indicates its stability or inertia, which, combined with improved cognitive functions, often negatively impacted by the neurotoxic effects of ethanol, and an increase in grooming behavior as a correlate of adaptive/compensatory manifestation of emotional stress, highlights the importance of considering age-related emotional and behavioral characteristics in the development of alcohol dependence mechanisms.