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Essential values of cocaine and non‐drug alternatives predict the choice between them
Author(s) -
Kearns David N.,
Kim Jung S.,
Tunstall Brendan J.,
Silberberg Alan
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
addiction biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.445
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1369-1600
pISSN - 1355-6215
DOI - 10.1111/adb.12450
Subject(s) - saccharin , reinforcement , psychology , addiction , preference , drug , developmental psychology , social psychology , psychiatry , statistics , medicine , mathematics
This study investigated the relationship between reinforcer value and choice between cocaine and two non‐drug alternative reinforcers in rats. The essential value (EV, a behavioral economic measure based on elasticity of demand) of intravenous cocaine and food (Experiment 1) or saccharin (Experiment 2) was determined in the first phase of each experiment. Food had higher EV than cocaine, whereas the EVs of cocaine and saccharin did not differ. In the second phase of each experiment, rats were allowed to make mutually exclusive choices between cocaine and the non‐drug alternative reinforcer. The main findings were that the EV of cocaine was a positive predictor of cocaine preference and the EV of food or saccharin was a negative predictor of cocaine preference. An analysis of within‐session patterns of choice behavior revealed sequential dependencies, whereby rats were more likely to choose cocaine on a particular trial after having chosen the non‐drug alternative on previous trials. When the time between choices was increased, these sequential dependencies disappeared. The results of these experiments are consistent with the suggestion that addiction‐like behavior involves both overvaluation of drug reinforcers and undervaluation of non‐drug reinforcers.