Schedule induction conditions not only exaggerate intake but also enhance drug solution choice

Revisiting long-access versus short-access cocaine self-administration in rats: intermittent intake promotes addiction symptoms independent of session length

In rats, continuous cocaine access during long self-administration sessions (6 versus 1-2 hours) promotes the development of behavioral symptoms of addiction. This has led to the assumption that taking large amounts of drug during extended daily bouts is necessary to develop an addiction phenotype. Recent work shows that within-session intermittent access (IntA) to cocaine produces much less drug intake than continuous-access procedures (i.e. long-access sessions) but evokes addiction symptoms more effectively. IntA-sessions are also long, typically lasting 6 hours. It is not known whether IntA-sessions must be extended to promote addiction-relevant changes in drug use over time. Here, we determined the influence of IntA-session length on patterns of cocaine use relevant to addiction. Two groups of male Wistar rats self-administered cocaine (0.25 mg/kg/injection, injected over 5 seconds) during 18 daily IntA-sessions. One group had long 6-hour sessions (Long-IntA), the other group had shorter, 2-hour sessions (Short-IntA). Only Long-IntA rats escalated their cocaine intake over sessions, but both groups developed a burst-like pattern of drug use over time and similar levels of psychomotor sensitization. The two groups also showed robust and similar levels of both responding for cocaine under a progressive ratio schedule of reinforcement and cocaine-induced reinstatement of extinguished drug-seeking behavior. In summary, long IntA-sessions lead to greater cocaine intake than shorter IntA-sessions, but the two conditions are equally effective in evoking the patterns of drug-taking and drug-seeking that define addiction. This suggests that chronic intermittent cocaine use, even during short daily bouts, is sufficient to promote addiction symptoms.

Two procedures establishing preference for oral cocaine and lidocaine solutions which do not use an associative history with a reinforcer

Groups of rats were exposed to daily, 3-h, fixed-time 1-min food-pellet delivery sessions, a procedure that produces overdrinking (schedule-induced polydipsia, SIP). Previous research demonstrated that rats drinking a drug or non-drug solution come to prefer that solution to water if the solution had (a) a past association with either a highly acceptable vehicle (e.g. glucose/saccharin), or (b) allowed rats to eschew drinking an unacceptable solution under SIP conditions. The present experiments show that under the solution-avoidance procedure, preference for a concurrent, alternative solution (0.19 mg/ml lidocaine or 0.24 mg/ml cocaine) occurred when a concentrated quinine solution alternative was either abruptly removed or faded. A concentrated cocaine solution, however, was minimally effective in producing a preference for 0.19 mg/ml lidocaine to water when cocaine concentration was faded. Flavor/nutrient-conditioning (conditioned reinforcement) and solution-eschewing (avoidance) procedures may throw light on the kinds of historical situations that determine the genesis of stable preferences for drugs and other substances.