Extinction of conditioned responses in abstinent cocaine or opioid users.

Reinstatement of Alcohol-Seeking Behavior by Drug-Associated Discriminative Stimuli after Prolonged Extinction in the Rat

“…It is well documented that "modalityspecific" stimuli are most effective in eliciting subjective reports of craving in cocaine abuse patients (Childress et al 1987a(Childress et al , 1987b. For example, cocaine "reminders" that can effectively induce "craving" are those that are closely tied to the patient's history of cocaine use, particularly their preferred route of cocaine administration .…”

“…For example, abstinent alcohol users exposed to a bar-like environment worked (i.e., pressed a button which dispensed alcohol) harder to acquire alcohol and showed greater subjective and physiological responses than those exposed to a neutral setting (Ludwig et al 1974). Similarly, abstinent opiate-dependent subjects reported increased craving in response to the presentation of drug-related stimuli compared to methadonemaintained patients (Childress et al 1987a). Drug-related stimuli can modify drug-seeking behavior in animals as well.…”

“…There is now ample evidence that conditioned stimuli associated with the availability or consumption of abused drugs enhance subjective feelings of craving and the motivation to engage in drug-taking behavior in humans (Childress et al 1987a(Childress et al , 1987b(Childress et al , 1988O'Brien et al 1990O'Brien et al , 1992Ehrman et al 1992;Kranzler and Bauer 1992;Robbins and Ehrman 1992). For example, abstinent alcohol users exposed to a bar-like environment worked (i.e., pressed a button which dispensed alcohol) harder to acquire alcohol and showed greater subjective and physiological responses than those exposed to a neutral setting (Ludwig et al 1974).…”

Drug fluency: A potential marker for cocaine use disorders

“…It would be of particular interest to include a sample of healthy control individuals with a high familiarity of drug-related stimuli (e.g., family members of addicted individuals, staff in drug treatment facilities or other professionals in the drug addiction field) to further examine this task's specificity and predictive value. One could postulate that only in the drug addicted individuals, but not those highly familiar with drug addiction, responses on the drug fluency task would be diagnostically and clinically useful; (3) the use of this drug fluency task together with other measures of cognition (e.g., attention bias/cue reactivity, memory) and emotion (e.g., regulation), especially inside functional neuroimaging environments, is needed to ascertain the exact neurocognitive processes evoked by this task in drug addiction and other psychopathology; and (4) the contribution to results of craving, other withdrawal symptoms, and severity of use needs to be explored with more sensitive tools (e.g., other tasks that actively elicit craving), in as much as these factors have been associated with greater cue-reactivity in drug addicted individuals (e.g., (Childress et al, 1987)). …”

Neuroanatomical Structures Underlying the Extinction of Drug-Seeking Behavior

“…Many of these theories suggest that drug addiction results from instrumental and associative overlearning whereby drugs and environmental cues and contexts become hypersalient leading to drug craving and relapse [12][13][14]. As a result, long-term drug use leads to the formation of compulsive, habitual, and ritualistic drug-taking behaviors Attempts to extinguish the salience of drug conditioning by behavioral modification techniques such as cue exposure therapy have only shown limited success [12,[15][16][17][18][19]. Additionally, most current behavioral and pharmacological treatments for addiction center on eliminating withdrawal symptoms or reducing drug intake with little focus on the process of extinction.…”