Reinstatement of conditioned reinforcing properties of cocaine-conditioned stimuli

The amygdala: securing pleasure and avoiding pain

“…Appetitive conditioned reinforcement can also be measured using “the acquisition of a new instrumental response with conditioned reinforcement” procedure (“ANR”; Hyde, 1976), in which individuals are trained first to make an instrumental response for the primary reinforcer and the pavlovian CS, and in a second phase of training are tested on their ability to acquire a novel instrumental response for presentations of the CS alone. Pre-training excitotoxic lesions of the BLA impair the acquisition of responding under second-order schedules for CSs associated with different primary reinforcers, including sex (Cador et al, 1989; Everitt et al, 1989), cocaine (Whitelaw et al, 1996; Arroyo et al, 1998; Goddard and Leri, 2006), and food (Hatfield et al, 1996), and likewise ANR is also impaired by excitotoxic lesions of the BLA in rats (Burns et al, 1993) and monkeys (Parkinson et al, 2001). Reversible lesions, induced by inactivation of the BLA with the glutamate (AMPA) receptor antagonist CNQX, also prevents discriminated responding for a previously amphetamine-associated CS during a test of conditioned reinforcement (Hitchcott and Phillips, 1997).…”

Cocaine-induced reinstatement in rats: evidence for a critical role of cocaine stimulus properties

“…For example, the locomotor activating effects of cocaine are perhaps not pure "motor" effects, but rather reflect the exaggerated exploration of the environment as a consequence of the increased incentive salience of environmental stimuli (Wise and Bozarth 1987). Moreover, psychostimulant drugs have been shown to potentiate operant responding reinforced by the presentation of a stimuli previously associated with either drug infusion (Goddard and Leri 2006), food delivery (Cador et al 1989), or intracranial electrical stimulation (Robbins and Koob 1978). Consequently, an incentive view of the reinstatement process has been proposed.…”

“…These drugs stimulate orienting and exploratory reactions (Wise and Bozarth 1987), enhance arousal (Berridge 2006), and potentiate the behavioral effectiveness of positive incentive stimuli (Cador et al 1991). Psychostimulant drugs have also been shown to enhance the motivational impact of both drug-related stimuli (Goddard and Leri 2006) and foodrelated stimuli (Cador et al 1991;Wyvell and Berridge 2000). Moreover, this incentive motivational effect of psychostimulant drugs shows sensitization over repeated drug exposure (Olausson et al 2004;Taylor and Horger 1999).…”

Steady-state methadone blocks cocaine seeking and cocaine-induced gene expression alterations in the rat brain

“…Hence, SSM was administered after the period of cocaine exposure, and mRNA expressions of MOP-r, pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC), prepro-enkephalin (ppEnk), and prepro-dynorphin (ppDyn) in mesolimbic and nigrostriatal regions was investigated right after the behavioral test given during SSM exposure. Furthermore, to specifically investigate the effect of SSM on the expression of responses to cocaine conditioned stimuli, we employed a behavioral method based on a conditioned reinforcement procedure (Davis and Smith 1987) recently adapted to study cocaine seeking in rats (Goddard and Leri 2006). This method is conceptually similar to place conditioning in that rats associate environmental stimuli with the effects of cocaine administered by the experimenter and then, in a drug-free state, emit an unlearned response motivated by these stimuli (Calcagnetti and Schechter 1993).…”