A Cocaine Cue Acts as an Incentive Stimulus in Some but not Others: Implications for Addiction

doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.11.015

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 67, Issue 8, 15 April 2010, Pages 730-736

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.11.015 Get rights and content

Background

In addicts drug cues attract attention, elicit approach, and motivate drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior, and addicts find it difficult to resist such cues. In preclinical studies we have found, however, that food cues acquire incentive motivational properties only in a subset of individuals. For example, a food cue becomes attractive, eliciting approach and engagement with it, and acts as an effective conditional reinforcer in some rats but not others. We asked, therefore, whether rats that have a propensity to attribute incentive salience to a food cue are the same ones that attribute incentive value to a drug (cocaine) cue.

Methods

We first used a Pavlovian conditioned approach procedure to determine which individual rats attributed incentive salience to a food cue. A second cue was then associated with the IV self-administration of cocaine. Later, the ability of the cocaine cue to maintain self-administration behavior and to reinstate self-administration after extinction was assessed.

Results

We report that in individuals that had a propensity to attribute incentive salience to a food cue, a cocaine cue spurred motivation to take drugs (its removal greatly diminished self-administration) and reinstated robust drug-seeking after extinction. However, in those individuals that failed to attribute incentive salience to a food cue, the cocaine cue was relatively devoid of incentive motivational properties.

Conclusions

We conclude that it is possible to determine, before any drug experience, which individuals will most likely have difficulty resisting drug cues, a trait that might confer susceptibility to addiction.

Section snippets

Pavlovian Training

Male Sprague–Dawley rats were initially trained with a Pavlovian conditioning procedure described previously (29). Briefly, an illuminated retractable lever (the CS) located to the left or right of a food magazine was inserted into the chamber for 8 sec. As the lever was retracted, a single 45-mg banana-flavored food pellet (the US) was delivered into the magazine. This CS–US pairing occurred on a response-independent random-interval 90-sec schedule 25 times/session for three sessions. The

Group Differences in the Propensity to Approach and Engage a Food-Related Cue

A summary of the experimental design is shown in Figure 1. In adult male rats presentation of a lever-CS for 8 sec was followed immediately by the unconditional delivery of a food pellet on each of 3 days of training. As described previously (29), the one-third of the rats showing the greatest number of lever deflections during the CS period were designated STs, and the one-third showing the fewest were designated GTs. The remaining rats were not used in any of these experiments. Rats

Discussion

If cues associated with rewards are attributed with incentive salience, they acquire the ability to act as incentive stimuli. Incentive stimuli have three fundamental properties: 1) they attract, eliciting approach toward them; 2) they are “wanted,” in the sense that animals will work to get them; and 3) they can spur ongoing instrumental actions to obtain the associated reward, as in the Pavlovian to instrumental transfer effect (21, 22). We have reported, however, that if a localizable cue is

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Archival ReportA Cocaine Cue Acts as an Incentive Stimulus in Some but not Others: Implications for Addiction

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Section snippets

Pavlovian Training

Group Differences in the Propensity to Approach and Engage a Food-Related Cue

Discussion

Drugs Alcoh Depend

Behav Brain Res

Pharmacol Biochem Behav

Neuropharmacology

Pharmacol Biochem Behav

Neurosci Biobehav Rev

Biol Psychiatry

Neuropharmacology

Brain Res Rev

Behav Brain Res

Brain Res Rev

Pharmacol Biochem Behav

Behav Brain Res

Brain Res Rev

Obesity and eatingInternal and external cues differentially affect the eating behavior of obese and normal humans

Science

Conditioned cues elicit eating in sated rats: A role for learning in meal initiation

Science

Conditioned responses to cocaine-related stimuli in cocaine abuse patients

Psychopharmacology

Conditioning factors in drug abuse: Can they explain compulsion?

J Psychopharmacol

Prelude to passion: Limbic activation by “unseen” drug and sexual cues

PLoS ONE

Role of conditioned reinforcers in the initiation, maintenance and extinction of drug-seeking behavior

Integr Physiol Behav Sci

Second-order schedules of drug self-administration in animals

Psychopharmacology

Influence of a conditioned light stimulus on cocaine self-administration in rats

Psychopharmacology

Acquisition, maintenance and reinstatement of intravenous cocaine self-administration under a second-order schedule of reinforcement in rats: Effects of conditioned cues and continuous access to cocaine

Psychopharmacology

Cocaine self-administration increased by compounding discriminative stimuli

Psychopharmacology

Archival Report
A Cocaine Cue Acts as an Incentive Stimulus in Some but not Others: Implications for Addiction