Drug discrimination: 30 years of progress

Drug discrimination learning: Interoceptive stimulus control of behavior and its implications for regulated and dysregulated drug intake

Drug discrimination research has generated rich evidence for the capacity of interoceptive drug stimuli to control behavior by serving as discriminative cues. Owing to its neuropharmacological specificity, drug discrimination learning has been widely used to characterize the stimulus effects and neuropharmacological underpinning of drugs. Apart from such utility, discriminative drug stimuli may help regulate drug use by disambiguating conditioned associations and post-intake outcomes. First, this review summarizes the evidence supporting interoceptive regulation of drug intake from the literature of exteroceptive discriminative control of drug-related behavior, effects of drug priming, and self-titration of drug intake. Second, an overview of interoceptive control of reward-seeking and the animal model of discriminated goal-tracking is provided to illustrate interoceptive stimulus control of the initiation and patterning of drug intake. Third, we highlight the importance of interoceptive control of aversion-avoidance in the termination of drug-use episodes and describe the animal model of discriminated taste avoidance that supports such a position. In bridging these discriminative functions of drug stimuli, we propose that interoceptive drug stimuli help regulate intake by disambiguating whether intake will be rewarding, nonrewarding, or aversive. The reflection and discussion on current theoretical formulations of interoceptive control of drug intake may further scientific advances to improve animal models to study the mechanisms by which interoceptive stimuli regulate drug intake, as well as how alterations of interoceptive processes may contribute to the transition to dysregulated drug use.

Hypothalamic control of interoceptive hunger

While energy balance is critical to survival, many factors influence food intake beyond caloric need or "hunger." Despite this, some neurons that drive feeding in mice are routinely referred to as "hunger neurons," whereas others are not. To understand how specific hypothalamic circuits control interoceptive hunger, we trained mice to discriminate fasted from sated periods. We then manipulated three hypothalamic neuronal populations with well-known effects on feeding while mice performed this task. While activation of ARC^AGRP neurons in sated mice caused mice to report being food-restricted, LH^VGAT neuron activation or LH^VGLUT2 neuron inhibition did not. In contrast, LH^VGAT neuron inhibition or LH^VGLUT2 neuron activation in fasted mice attenuated natural hunger, whereas ARC^AGRP neuron inhibition did not. Each neuronal population evoked distinct effects on food consumption and reward. After satiety- or sickness-induced devaluation, ARC^AGRP neurons drove calorie-specific feeding, while LH^VGAT neurons drove calorie-indiscriminate food intake. Our data support a role for ARC^AGRP neurons in homeostatic feeding and implicate them in driving a hunger-like internal state that directs behavior toward caloric food sources. Moreover, manipulations of LH circuits did not evoke hunger-like effects in sated mice, suggesting that they may govern feeding more related to reward, compulsion, or generalized consumption than to energy balance, but also that these LH circuits can be powerful negative appetite modulators in fasted mice. This study highlights the complexity of hypothalamic feeding regulation and can be used as a framework to characterize how other neuronal circuits affect hunger and identify potential therapeutic targets for eating disorders.

Human Drug Discrimination: Elucidating the Neuropharmacology of Commonly Abused Illicit Drugs

Drug-discrimination procedures empirically evaluate the control that internal drug states have over behavior. They provide a highly selective method to investigate the neuropharmacological underpinnings of the interoceptive effects of drugs in vivo. As a result, drug discrimination has been one of the most widely used assays in the field of behavioral pharmacology. Drug-discrimination procedures have been adapted for use with humans and are conceptually similar to preclinical drug-discrimination techniques in that a behavior is differentially reinforced contingent on the presence or absence of a specific interoceptive drug stimulus. This chapter provides a basic overview of human drug-discrimination procedures and reviews the extant literature concerning the use of these procedures to elucidate the underlying neuropharmacological mechanisms of commonly abused illicit drugs (i.e., stimulants, opioids, and cannabis) in humans. This chapter is not intended to review every available study that used drug-discrimination procedures in humans. Instead, when possible, exemplary studies that used a stimulant, opioid, or Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (the primary psychoactive constituent of cannabis) to assess the discriminative-stimulus effects of drugs in humans are reviewed for illustrative purposes. We conclude by commenting on the current state and future of human drug-discrimination research.

Human drug discrimination: A primer and methodological review

Drug-discrimination procedures empirically evaluate the control that internal drug states exert over behavior. They provide a highly selective method to investigate the neuropharmacological underpinnings of the interoceptive effects of drugs. Historically, drug discrimination has been one of the most widely used assays in the field of behavioral pharmacology. Drug-discrimination procedures have also been adapted for use with humans and are conceptually similar to preclinical drug-discrimination techniques in that a behavior is differentially reinforced contingent on the presence or absence of a specific interoceptive drug stimulus. This review gives some general history and background concerning the major theoretical concepts and principles of drug-discrimination research as well as its relevance to substance-use disorders. This article also provides a procedural overview and discusses key methodological issues that must be considered when designing and conducting a human drug-discrimination study. Although drug discrimination is unequivocally one of the most sophisticated and useful behavioral assays to investigate the underlying neuropharmacology of drugs in vivo, enthusiasm for its use has steadily declined in the last decade and a half. We conclude by commenting on the current state of drug-discrimination research and suggest potential avenues for future drug-discrimination research. (PsycINFO Database Record

The discriminative stimulus effects of the neurotensin NTS1 receptor agonist PD149163 in rats: stimulus generalization testing with dopamine D1 and D2 receptor ligands

Brain-penetrant neurotensin NTS1 receptor agonists produce antipsychotic drug-like effects in animal models, including inhibition of conditioned avoidance responding and reversal of psychostimulant-induced hyperactivity and stereotypy. Allosteric interactions between NTS1 receptors and dopamine D2 receptors may account for some of these antipsychotic effects. In order to determine the role that dopamine receptors may play in the behavioral effects produced by activation of NTS1 receptors, a drug discrimination approach was used in rats to evaluate the potential mediation of NTS1 receptor agonist stimulus effects by dopamine D1 and D2 receptors. Rats were trained to discriminate either the NTS1 receptor agonist PD149163, the D1 receptor agonist SKF81297, or the D2 receptor agonist quinpirole from vehicle in a two choice drug discrimination task. Full stimulus generalization occurred from PD149163 to the typical antipsychotic drug and D2 receptor-preferring antagonist haloperidol. However, stimulus generalization did not occur from SKF81297 or quinpirole to PD149163. The discriminative cue for SKF91297 and quinpirole was fully blocked the D1 receptor antagonist SCH23390 and the D2/3 receptor antagonist raclopride, respectively. Cross generalization did not occur between SKF91297 and quinpirole. Based on these findings, the stimulus effects of PD149163 may be mediated, in part, through D2 receptor antagonism, but this may only be evident when PD149163 is used as the training drug.

A dual Lewis base activation strategy for enantioselective carbene-catalyzed annulations

A dual activation strategy integrating N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) catalysis and a second Lewis base has been developed. NHC-bound homoenolate equivalents derived from α,β-unsaturated aldehydes combine with transient reactive o-quinone methides in an enantioselective formal [4 + 3] fashion to access 2-benzoxopinones. The overall approach provides a general blueprint for the integration of carbene catalysis with additional Lewis base activation modes.

Assessment of the interoceptive effects of alcohol in rats using short-term training procedures

In the present study, we sought to determine whether the interoceptive effects of alcohol (1 g/kg, IG) could be assessed using a Pavlovian discrimination method, in which the alcohol drug state sets the occasion for which an environmental stimulus (e.g., light) will be followed by a sucrose reward. This procedure takes advantage of a naturally occurring behavior (i.e., food-seeking) which can be trained rapidly prior to the initiation of discrimination training. Given that the interoceptive effects of alcohol are routinely assessed using operant drug discrimination methods, another group of rats was trained using standard two-lever operant drug discrimination procedures in an effort to compare the Pavlovian procedure to a known behavioral benchmark. The results from this work show that, in addition to operant discrimination procedures, a Pavlovian discrimination task can be used to evaluate the interoceptive effects of alcohol. In addition to the brief behavioral sucrose access training (3 days) required prior to the initiation of the Pavlovian discrimination, the alcohol discrimination was acquired relatively rapidly (i.e., 8 training sessions), shortening the overall duration of the experiment. These features of the Pavlovian procedure make it a valuable method by which to assess the interoceptive effects of alcohol if a short experimental time frame is required, such as assessing the interoceptive effects of alcohol during a brief developmental window (e.g., adolescence) or determining the effects of a pretreatment (i.e., chronic stress, chronic drug pretreatment) on the acquisition of the alcohol discrimination. As such, this initial characterization confirms the feasibility of using this Pavlovian discrimination training method as an additional tool by which to assess the interoceptive effects of alcohol, as there may be experimental situations that necessitate short term discrimination training.

Sign- vs. goal-tracking in a feature positive discrimination task with nicotine: importance of spatial location of the conditional stimulus

We assessed whether sign-tracking developed along with goal-tracking in a Pavlovian drug discrimination task. Rats had nicotine sessions intermixed with saline sessions. For nicotine sessions, 15-s illumination of a light near (Experiment 1) or far (Experiment 2) from the dipper receptacle was followed by sucrose. Saline sessions were similar to nicotine sessions except sucrose was withheld. Regardless of location, the light evoked goal-tracking only on nicotine sessions. Only rats with the light near the dipper developed sign-tracking.