Competition for sucrose-pellets in triads of male Wistar rats: effects of acute and subchronic chlordiazepoxide.

Within triads of male Wistar rats, some animals almost completely abstain from competition for palatable sucrose pellets (so-called poor-performing rats), whereas other rats consistently win the competition (so-called high-performing rats). Subchronic (5 mg/kg; 5 consecutive days), but not acute (0.1-20 mg/kg), treatment with chlordiazepoxide temporarily helped poor-performing rats to behave more competitively. This finding, considered together with parallel studies (using high-performing rats), suggested that chlordiazepoxide's beneficial effect was only demonstrable when the poor-performing rats had become tolerant to the drug's initial sedative effect.