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Response‐Maintaining Effects of Quinpirole in the Rat: Effects of Operant History and Drug‐Paired Stimuli
Author(s) -
Collins Gregory Thomas,
Woods James Henry
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.23.1_supplement.588.11
Subject(s) - psychology , quinpirole , latent inhibition , pharmacology , conditioning , medicine , neuroscience , audiology , developmental psychology , classical conditioning , dopamine , dopamine receptor , statistics , mathematics
D2‐like agonists, such as quinpirole (QPRL), maintain responding in rats and monkeys, but are rarely abused in humans. These studies were aimed at examining the influence of operant history and drug‐paired stimuli on QPRL maintained responding in rats. Rats were trained to nosepoke (NP) on a FR1 for cocaine (COC) with a 5 s TO signaled by houselight illumination. Once responding stabilized, COC, QPRL, or saline (SAL) were substituted (SUB) with and without the COC‐paired stimuli, or on a previously inactive lever (LV). During LV SUBs, LV presses produced an injection followed by a 5 s TO signaled by a flashing houselight; NPs still produced the COC‐paired stimuli, but no injection. COC maintained stable responding regardless of whether stimuli were presented, whereas QPRL maintained responding only when the stimuli were paired with injection. During the LV SUB, responding was reallocated from the NP to the LV when COC was available, whereas NPs persisted, and LV presses were low when QPRL was available. These results suggest that the response‐maintaining effects of QPRL are primarily mediated by an enhancement of the conditioned reinforcing effects of the stimuli that were previously paired with COC. Supported by NIDA grants DA 020669 and F013771