The attribution of incentive salience to a stimulus that signals an intravenous injection of cocaine

A central premise of a number of theories of addiction is that discrete environmental stimuli repeatedly paired with drugs of abuse acquire incentive salience as a result of Pavlovian learning. There is, however, no unequivocal evidence supporting this assumption. Thus, we employed a Pavlovian condi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavioural brain research 2006-05, Vol.169 (2), p.320-324
Main Authors: Uslaner, Jason M., Acerbo, Martin J., Jones, Samantha A., Robinson, Terry E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Addictive behaviors
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Analysis of Variance
Anesthetics, Local - administration & dosage
Animals
Autoshaping
Behavior, Animal
Biological and medical sciences
Cocaine - administration & dosage
Conditioned stimuli
Conditioning, Classical - drug effects
Drug addiction
Injections, Intravenous - methods
Male
Medical sciences
Motivation
Neuropharmacology
Pavlovian conditioning
Pharmacology. Drug treatments
Psychoanaleptics: cns stimulant, antidepressant agent, nootropic agent, mood stabilizer..., (alzheimer disease)
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Psychopharmacology
Rats
Rats, Sprague-Dawley
Reinforcement (Psychology)
Sign-tracking
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Summary:A central premise of a number of theories of addiction is that discrete environmental stimuli repeatedly paired with drugs of abuse acquire incentive salience as a result of Pavlovian learning. There is, however, no unequivocal evidence supporting this assumption. Thus, we employed a Pavlovian conditioning procedure known to imbue non-drug reinforcers with incentive salience and extended it to study the effects of intravenous cocaine. Specifically, we examined whether a cue paired with intravenous cocaine administration would come to elicit approach towards it (sign-tracking), even if no behavioral response were required to receive the cue or drug. We found that when a cue was paired with intravenous cocaine delivery (but not when it was unpaired) rats came to approach and investigate the cue, and did so with increasing rapidity. We conclude that Pavlovian learning can imbue drug-paired cues with incentive salience, making them attractive and “wanted” stimuli. Delineating the neurobiological mechanisms responsible for this process will be important for understanding and treating drug addiction.
ISSN:0166-4328
1872-7549
DOI:10.1016/j.bbr.2006.02.001