Pavlivian Conditioning to Insulin-Induced Hypoglycemia as Indicated by Glycemic Response Motor Activity and Anxiety

The purpose of this experiment was to demonstrate the responses to stimuli predicting the onset of hypoglycemia {HG), specifically the overt behavioral and glycemic conditioned responses to insulin-produced HG. When drug-opposite compensatory responses become associated with situational and environmental cues that predict drug administration, compensatory mechanisms can be elicited solely by drugassociated cues. Several studies have been conducted to determine the conditioned bloodglucose responses as elicited by stimuli predicting hypoglycemia. However, only a few studies have examined the behavioral conditioned responses associated with hypoglycemia. Insulin-induced HG and the elevated plus maze (EPM) procedure were utilized to determine the direction of the conditioned glycemic, motor activity and anxiety responses in rat subjects. Rodents that received insulin prior to EPM testing demonstrated significantly high levels of anxious behavior and decreased activity during the later phases of testing. Although this study was able to demonstrate the unconditioned effects of hypoglycemia on activity and anxiety, it was unable to detect the presence of a conditioned behavioral or physiological response. The level of activity and time in open arms decreased as a function of amount of testing time. Thus, habituation-related changes in open-arm time and activity levels may have prevented detection of conditioned responses as indicated by these behavioral measures.