Effect of caloric and non-caloric sweet reward solutions on thermal facial operant conditioning.

Sweet solutions are commonly used in animal research to deliver drugs to test for addictive capacity and efficacy. In this study we compared the effects of a range of sucrose and saccharin concentrations on the performance of an operant assay. Our findings demonstrate that across a range of sucrose solutions some produce a success ratio which could mistakenly be labeled allodynic demonstrating the importance of choosing the correct reward solution.