Predicting Impulsivity and Compulsivity in Mice Using a Rapid Drug Abuse Liability Battery (RDALB) Assessing Hyperneophagia, Locomotor Reactivity, and Novelty Preference

Impulsivity and compulsivity are two major biobehavioral contributors to addiction in human and animal models. In preclinical research, assays typically used to measure these variables are often labor intensive and require an extensive training history, so developing inexpensive, high‐throughput procedures that are predictive of drug abuse vulnerability would be a significant advancement. The data presented here will describe a combined battery that concurrently measures baseline hyperneophagia, locomotor reactivity, and novelty preference in a 1‐hour session. All experiments took place in a 3‐compartment spatial conditioning chamber, comprised of two large chambers and a connecting hallway. Video was collected via a cell phone camera and analyzed using Behavior Cloud software that quantified locomotor activity, with each compartment analyzed separately as discrete zones. In the present experiments, 48 drug‐naïve mice were examined using the rapid drug abuse liability battery (RDALB) to profile animals into high‐ and low‐ impulsivity and compulsivity groups, which is hypothesized to inform abuse liability risk. Animals were initially placed in one compartment with the door closed for a 30 minute habituation period. This habituation period was also interpreted as ‘inescapable novelty’ and any locomotor activity observed was classified as locomotor reactivity, which is believed to predict impulsivity. After the habituation period the chamber door was raised, and animals were free to explore all three sections for a second 30 minute period. The time spent in the novel compartment, versus the time spent in the initial compartment, was calculated as novelty preference, which is believed to predict compulsive behaviors. Hyperneophagia was measured as the latency to drink a novel milk solution after emergence from the first chamber. Large individual differences were found between animals within each assay, allowing for separation into discrete phenotypes ‐‐ for instance, the latency for animals to drink milk ranged from 7 seconds to over 21 minutes. No correlations were observed between different behavioral outcomes, indicating that the RDALB is likely measuring distinct impulsive and compulsive phenotypes. Future oral self‐administration experiments are planned to validate the predictive validity of the RDALB. Support or Funding Information These studies are supported by DA039195, DA022981 and the UAMS Center for Translational Neuroscience. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .