Search results for "place preference"
showing 10 items of 104 documents
Intraspecific Communication Through Chemical Signals in Female Mice: Reinforcing Properties of Involatile Male Sexual Pheromones
2006
In rodents, social and reproductive behaviors critically depend on chemical signals, including sexual pheromones that have been suggested (but not demonstrated) to be rewarding. In this work, we analyze this issue by studying the chemoinvestigatory behavior of adult female mice (without experience with male-derived chemicals) toward 1) the synthetic odorant citralva, 2) bedding soiled by different conspecifics (females, males, and castrated males), and 3) volatiles derived from bedding soiled by males and castrated males (confronted in 2-choice tests). We also study whether these chemical signals are able to induce conditioned place preference, a reliable test for rewarding properties of st…
Capacity of novelty-induced locomotor activity and the hole-board test to predict sensitivity to the conditioned rewarding effects of cocaine
2012
Novelty-seeking in rodents, defined as enhanced specific exploration of novel situations, is considered to predict the response of animals to drugs of abuse and, thus, allow "drug-vulnerable" individuals to be identified. The main objective of this study was to assess the predictive ability of two well-known paradigms of the novelty-seeking trait - novelty-induced locomotor activity (which distinguishes High- and Low-Responder mice, depending on their motor activity) and the hole-board test (which determines High- and Low-Novelty Seeker mice depending on the number of head dips they perform) - to identify subjects that would subsequently be more sensitive to the conditioned rewarding effect…
Acetaldehyde Oral Self-Administration: Evidence from the Operant-Conflict Paradigm
2011
Background: Acetaldehyde (ACD), ethanol's first metabolite, has been reported to interact with the dopaminergic reward system, and with the neural circuits involved in stress response. Rats self-administer ACD directly into cerebral ventricles, and multiple intracerebroventricular infusions of ACD produce conditioned place preference. Self-administration has been largely employed to assess the reinforcing and addictive properties of most drugs of abuse. In particular, operant conditioning is a valid model to investigate drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior in rats. Methods: This study was aimed at the evaluation of (i) the motivational properties of oral ACD in the induction and maintenanc…
Effects of CNQX and MPEP on sensitization to the rewarding effects of morphine
2011
The present study was conducted to evaluate the influence of the glutamatergic receptors α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) and metabotropic glutamate 5 (mGlu5) receptors on sensitization to the rewarding effects of morphine. The effects of pre-treatment with saline or 20 mg/kg morphine plus the AMPA receptor antagonist 6-cyano-7-nitroquinoxaline-2,3-dione (CNQX) (5 or 10 mg/kg) or the metabotropic Glu5 receptor antagonist 6-methyl-2-(phenylethynyl)-pyridine (MPEP) (5 or 10 mg/kg) on the place conditioning induced by a low dose of morphine (2 mg/kg) were assessed. The 2 mg/kg dose of morphine was ineffective in animals pre-treated with saline but induced a clear con…
Neurochemical Substrates of MDMA Reward: Effects of the Inhibition of Serotonin Reuptake on the Acquisition and Reinstatement of MDMA-induced CPP
2013
Different neurotransmitter brain systems have been implicated in the rewarding effects of 3,4-methylenedioxymetamphetamine (MDMA), including dopamine or serotonin. Serotonin selective reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) are a commonly prescribed therapy for psychiatric disorders, and the SSRI fluoxetine is recommended for MDMA users due to its neuroprotective effect against MDMAinduced neurotoxicity. In the present work, we employed the conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm to study how the inhibition of serotonin reuptake with fluoxetine affected the rewarding and reinstating effects of MDMA in adolescent male mice. Firstly, we evaluated the motivational effects of fluoxetine (1 and 10 mg/kg)…
Adolescent pre-exposure to ethanol or MDMA prolongs the conditioned rewarding effects of MDMA
2011
Adolescents often take ethanol (EtOH) in combination with MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethylamphetamine). In the present work we studied the effect of repeated intermittent adolescent pre-exposure to both drugs on the behavioral and neurochemical effects of MDMA in mice. Sixteen days after pre-treatment, the rewarding and reinstating effects of MDMA in the conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm were evaluated, along with the levels of biogenic amines, basal motor activity and corticosterone response to different challenges. Pre-exposure to EtOH, MDMA or EtOH+MDMA did not affect the CPP induced by 10mg/kg of MDMA. However, adolescent exposure to EtOH or MDMA increased the duration of the co…
Refining the dual olfactory hypothesis: Pheromone reward and odour experience
2009
In rodents, sexual advertisement and gender recognition are mostly (if not exclusively) mediated by chemosignals. Specifically, there is ample evidence indicating that female mice are ‘innately’ attracted by male sexual pheromones that have critical non-volatile components and are detected by the vomeronasal organ. These pheromones can only get access to the vomeronasal organ by active pumping mechanisms that require close contact with the source of the stimulus (e.g. urine marks) during chemoinvestigation. We have hypothesised that male sexual pheromones are rewarding to female mice. Indeed, male-soiled bedding can be used as a reinforcer to induce conditioned place preference, provided co…
Role of NMDA and AMPA glutamatergic receptors in the effects of social defeat on the rewarding properties of MDMA in mice
2019
Exposure to social stress alters the response to drugs of abuse of experimental animals. Changes in the glutamatergic system seem to play a role in the effects of social defeat stress on the rewarding properties of cocaine and amphetamine. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the involvement of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) and alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) glutamate receptors in the effects of social defeat on the conditioned place preference induced by 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). Our hypothesis was that changes in these receptors could mediate the effects of social defeat on MDMA reward. Young adult male mice were exposed to an episode…
The rewarding effects of ethanol are modulated by binge eating of a high-fat diet during adolescence
2017
Abstract Binge-eating is considered a specific form of overeating characterized by intermittent and high caloric food intake in a short period of time. Epidemiologic studies support a positive relation between the ingestion of fat and ethanol (EtOH), specifically among adolescent subjects. The aim of this work was to clarify the role of the compulsive, limited and intermittent intake of a high-fat food during adolescence on the rewarding effects of EtOH. After binge-eating for 2 h, three days a week from postnatal day (PND) 29, the reinforcing effects of EtOH were tested with EtOH self-administration (SA), conditioned place preference (CPP) and ethanol locomotor sensitization procedures in …
High novelty-seeking predicts greater sensitivity to the conditioned rewarding effects of cocaine
2011
Novelty-seeking in rodents, defined as enhanced specific exploration of novel situations, is considered to predict the response of animals to drugs of abuse and, thus, identify "drug-vulnerable" individuals. The main objective of this work was to determine the capacity of two animal models-the novel object recognition task and the novel environment test-for evaluating to what extent novelty-seeking can predict greater sensitivity to the rewarding properties of cocaine in young adult (PND 56) and adolescent (PND 35) OF1 mice of both sexes. Conditioned place preference, a useful tool for evaluating the sensitivity of individuals to the incentive properties of addictive drugs, was induced with…