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PMID: 17888555 Published · ppublish English Journal Article Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural Review

How to make a rat addicted to cocaine.

Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry ·Vol. 31 ·No. 8 ·2007-11-15 ·Pages 1614-24

Roberts DC, Morgan D, Liu Y

Abstract

Procedures have been developed which provide extremely stable patterns of cocaine self-administration in rats and these have been useful in lesion and drug pretreatment studies aimed at understanding the neurobiology of cocaine reinforcement. The issue now is whether studying the neurobiology of reinforcement is the same as studying the neurobiology of addiction. If the goal is to understand a progressive and deteriorating disorder, then the self-administration procedures should model specific aspects of the progressive stages of the addiction process. Here we review theoretical strategies for modeling the addiction process and present data from a series of experiments from our laboratory showing conditions which produce a progressive change in the motivation to self-administer cocaine in rats. This phenomenon is revealed by an escalation in breakpoints on a progressive ratio schedule. The effect, which is robust and persistent, depends on dose and speed of injection. Interestingly, high drug intake can retard the development of this effect, which we argue indicates that the addiction process has a developmental sequence. Finally, we suggest that specific parameters (dose, price and availability) can be used to examine the transition from recreational use to binge-like intake.

MeSH Terms
Animals Cocaine-Related Disorders/psychology Conditioning, Operant/drug effects Dose-Response Relationship, Drug Motivation Rats Reinforcement, Psychology Self Administration
Authors & Affiliations
3 authors, click to expand affiliations / ORCID
Roberts David C S
Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, United States. dcsrobts@wfubmc.edu
Morgan Drake
Liu Yu
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Article Info
Journal
Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry
Abbr.
Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry
ISSN
0278-5846
DOI
10.1016/j.pnpbp.2007.08.028
Email
dcsrobts@wfubmc.edu
Published
2007-11-15
Epub
2007-00-28
Pages
1614-24
Language
English
Region
England
NLM ID
8211617
PMCID
PMC2140146
Subset
IM
Grants
NIDA NIH HHS · R01 DA014030-06 · United States
NIDA NIH HHS · K01 DA013957 · United States
NIDA NIH HHS · R01DA14030 · United States
NIDA NIH HHS · K01DA13957 · United States
NIDA NIH HHS · R01 DA014030 · United States
External Links
PubMed source DOI: 10.1016/j.pnpbp.2007.08.028 PMC Full Text View journal details
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