Nicotine does not produce state-dependent effects on learning in a Pavlovian appetitive goal tracking task with rats

Abstract

Past research has shown that when rats received 0.4 mg base/kg nicotine paired reliably with intermittent sucrose delivery that anticipatory sucrose-seeking behavior (i.e., goal tracking) was differentially displayed in the nicotine state relative to intermixed saline sessions in which no sucrose was delivered. The present research extended this observation to a lower dose of nicotine (i.e., 0.2 mg base/kg) and tested a state-dependent learning account of differential conditioned responding. According to this account, the increase in goal tracking on nicotine sessions reflects a chambersucrose association that is only recalled when in the nicotine state. We used a 2 × 2 factorial design in which rats received sucrose deliveries in one drug state (nicotine or saline) and were then tested in the same state (Nic→Nic or Sal→Sal) or a different state (Nic→Sal or Sal→Nic) after acquiring the conditioned response. A state-dependency account predicts disruption in conditioned goal tracking for rats that receive a shift in drug state on the test day. This disruption did not occur suggesting that differential control of conditioned responding by nicotine is more likely due to a direct excitatory association between the interoceptive cueing effects of nicotine and the appetitive qualities of sucrose.

Conditioned Response Evoked by Nicotine Conditioned Stimulus Preferentially Induces c-Fos Expression in Medial Regions of Caudate-Putamen

“…Albeit possible, we have published data that suggests that this possibility is unlikely (Bevins et al, 2007;. In these studies, the nicotine stimulus, along with all the chamber stimuli, was paired with sucrose on every session.…”

“…To test this possibility, rats were treated with saline rather than nicotine for the first time. Removal of the nicotine stimulus did not significantly disrupt goal-tracking behavior (Bevins et al, 2007;, suggesting that nicotine in these studies was not a sufficiently salient stimulus element to acquire control of behavior when the external chamber cues were as good of a predictor. In the present study, these chamber cues were even a better predictor than nicotine.…”

Active Self-aspects as a Basis for Encoding Specificity Effects in Memory

“…To the contrary, not all states and contexts produce memory dependency effects. For instance, people do not exhibit memory dependency effects for chewing gum (e.g., Miles & Johnson, 2007;Overman, Sun, Golding, & Prevost, 2009), nicotine (e.g., Bevins, Penrod, & Reichel, 2007), or stress (e.g., Thompson et al, 2001). Therefore, given that memory-dependency effects can occur for self-aspects (as we have shown here), it raises the question of what these various internal states, external contexts, and self-aspects have in common that enables them to elicit memory dependency effects.…”

Interoceptive conditioning with nicotine using extinction and re-extinction to assess stimulus similarity with bupropion

“…Goal-tracking refers to approach behavior to a location where the reinforcer has occurred in the past (Boakes, 1977; Farwell and Ayres, 1979). Previous research has shown that this acquired appetitive behavior controlled by the nicotine stimulus does not reflect state-dependent learning (Bevins et al, 2007; Murray and Bevins, 2011), cannot be attributed to a non-associative or stimulant effect of nicotine (Besheer et al, 2004; Murray et al, 2009; Reichel et al, 2007; Wilkinson et al, 2006), and follows many postulates of Pavlovian conditioning (Bevins and Murray, 2011; Murray et al, 2009). …”