1. Steep effort discounting of a preferred reward over a freely-available option in prolonged methamphetamine withdrawal in male rats
- Author
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Thompson, Andrew B, Gerson, Julian, Stolyarova, Alexandra, Bugarin, Amador, Hart, Evan E, Jentsch, J David, and Izquierdo, Alicia
- Subjects
Biological Psychology ,Psychology ,Substance Misuse ,Drug Abuse (NIDA only) ,Basic Behavioral and Social Science ,Methamphetamine ,Behavioral and Social Science ,Brain Disorders ,Good Health and Well Being ,Animals ,Central Nervous System Stimulants ,Choice Behavior ,Delay Discounting ,Male ,Motivation ,Rats ,Rats ,Long-Evans ,Reward ,Substance Withdrawal Syndrome ,Time Factors ,Effort discounting ,Cost-benefit decision-making ,Reward sensitivity ,Psychostimulant ,Medical and Health Sciences ,Psychology and Cognitive Sciences ,Psychiatry ,Biological psychology - Abstract
RationaleDrug addiction can be described as aberrant allocation of effort toward acquiring drug, despite associated costs. It is unclear if this behavioral pattern results from an overvaluation of reward or to an altered sensitivity to costs.ObjectivePresent experiments assessed reward sensitivity and effortful choice in rats following 1 week of withdrawal from methamphetamine (mAMPH).MethodsRats were treated with either saline or an escalating dose mAMPH regimen, then tested after a week without the drug. In experiment 1, rats were given a free choice between water and various concentrations of sucrose solution to assess general reward sensitivity. In experiment 2, rats were presented with a choice between lever-pressing for sucrose pellets on a progressive ratio schedule or consuming freely-available chow.ResultsIn experiment 1, we found no differences in sucrose preference between mAMPH- and saline-pretreated rats. In experiment 2, when selecting between two options, mAMPH-pretreated rats engaged in less lever-pressing for sucrose pellets (p
- Published
- 2017