The Effects of Rimonabant (SR141716) on the Reinstatement of Cocaine-Seeking Behavior via Oral Self-Administration in the Presence of a Tactile Discriminative Stimulus

Brandner, Adam

The Effects of Rimonabant (SR141716) on the Reinstatement of Cocaine-Seeking Behavior via Oral Self-Administration in the Presence of a Tactile Discriminative Stimulus

Persistent URL

http://hdl.handle.net/10456/42862

Author(s)

Brandner, Adam

Date Issued

April 3, 2017

Abstract

Cocaine addiction in the United States has reached epidemic proportions. About 30 percent of people above the age of 18 reported using cocaine in 2014 and an increase in overdoses has been observed since 2001. Current rehabilitation techniques still result in a high rate of relapses. Rimonabant has been proposed as a pharmacological treatment for preventing relapse in patients that suffer from cocaine addiction. The present study investigated whether or not Rimonabant can attenuate cocaine-seeking behavior via oral self-administration in the presence of a discriminative stimulus by using the four phase reinstatement model. Six female Sprague-Dawley rats were trained on a variable ratio 5 (VR5) schedule of reinforcement to acquire, maintain, and extinguish the behavior of lever pressing for cocaine. A mixed model analyses of variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant difference in response rate between Rimonabant (1.0 mg/kg) paired with a subthreshold dose of cocaine (1.25 mg/kg) injected intraperitoneally (i.p.) when compared to the response rate with just the i.p. injection of subthreshold dose of cocaine (p < 0.05, p = 0.05). However, the oral self-administration behavior was not acquired at the beginning of the acquisition phase, therefore, the significance of the reinstatement phase remains inconclusive.

Major

Neuroscience

First Reader(s)

Clark, Rodney D.