Design and development of a modified runway model of mouse drug self-administration

Abstract

The present study established a novel mouse model of a runway drug self-administration in our laboratory. The operant runway apparatus consisted of three long runways arranged in a zig-zag manner. The methodology consisted of six distinct phases: habituation, preconditioning, conditioning, post-conditioning, extinction and reinstatement. The effects of saline were compared with escalating doses of either ethanol (0.5–4.0 g/kg, i.p), heroin (5–40 mg/kg, i.p), or nicotine (0.1–0.5mg/kg, i.p) administered in the goal box during the conditioning phase (day 1 to day 5). A significant decrease in the time of trained (conditioned) mice to reach the goal box confirmed the subjects’ motivation to seek those drugs on day 6 (expression). The mice were then subjected to non-rewarded extinction trials for 5 days over which run times were significantly increased. After 5 days of abstinence, a priming dose of ethanol or heroin (1/5th of maximum dose used in conditioning) significantly reinstated the drug-seeking behavior. These results suggest that the modified runway model can serve as a powerful behavioral tool for the study of the behavioral and neurobiological bases of drug self-administration and, as such, is appropriate simple but powerful tool for investigating the drug-seeking behavior of laboratory mice.

Behavioral features of motivated response to alcohol inDrosophila

“…However, this Pavlovian assay lacks the tracking resolution to quantify behavior during ethanol administration. Operant runway models are commonly used as a tool for studying goal-seeking motivated behavior [2,9,16]. An unfortunate disadvantage of this model is that it can be difficult to assess how much effort the animal is expending to achieve the reward [2,9].…”

“…Operant runway models are commonly used as a tool for studying goal-seeking motivated behavior [2,9,16]. An unfortunate disadvantage of this model is that it can be difficult to assess how much effort the animal is expending to achieve the reward [2,9]. Our assay overcomes this disadvantage by using high content tracking which adds a rich repertoire of behavioral metrics that can be associated with different aspects of the task in this apparatus.…”

“…Runway paradigms have been effectively used to study motivated behavior for cocaine [1][2][3], opioids [4][5][6], nicotine [7,8] and alcohol [9] in rodent models. We developed a runway-based memory apparatus for Drosophila, the Behavioral Expression of Ethanol Reinforcement Runway (BEER Run), in which the consequence of traversing the runway and entering the mechanically gated end chamber is an intoxicating dose of volatilized ethanol.…”

Morinda citrifolia Linn. (Noni) fruit extract attenuates ethanol seeking behavior in mouse runway paradigm

“…The Composite Aluminium was used to make this apparatus as described in our earlier publication [3]. The mice tracement using this apparatus was noted in real time with the help of a Logitech webcam (C270) mounted above the apparatus and also attached with a computer.…”

“…Ideally, one would want a system with precise motivational and confounding factors that should not affect animal behavior. Recently, we developed a novel runway model of drug selfadministration using mice without compromising a great active long-term analysis of runway efficient performance for drug reward [3].…”