scholarly journals Individual differences in social play behaviour predict alcohol intake and control over alcohol seeking in rats

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi M. B. Lesscher ◽  
E. J. Marijke Achterberg ◽  
Stephen M. Siviy ◽  
Louk J. M. J. Vanderschuren
Keyword(s):  
Substance Use ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Conditioned Suppression ◽  
Alcohol Intake ◽  
Social Play ◽  
Loss Of Control ◽  
Self Administration ◽  
Play Behaviour ◽  
Alcohol Seeking

Abstract Rationale Social play behaviour is a rewarding social activity displayed by young mammals, thought to be important for the development of brain and behaviour. Indeed, disruptions of social play behaviour in rodents have been associated with cognitive deficits and augmented sensitivity to self-administration of substances of abuse, including alcohol, later in life. However, the relation between social development and loss of control over substance use, a key characteristic of substance use disorders including alcohol use disorder (AUD), has not been investigated. Moreover, it remains unknown how inherent differences in playfulness relate to differences in the sensitivity to substance use and AUD. Objective The objective of this study is to determine how individual differences in juvenile social play behaviour predict alcohol intake and loss of control over alcohol seeking. Methods Juvenile male Lister hooded rats were characterized for their tendency to engage in social play behaviour. Subsequently, alcohol consumption and conditioned suppression of alcohol seeking were assessed in the tertiles of rats that showed the most and least social play. Results The rats that engaged most in social play behaviour consumed more alcohol than their less playful counterparts. However, whereas the most playful rats showed intact conditioned suppression of alcohol seeking, the least playful rats showed no such suppression. Conclusion Individual levels of playfulness predict the sensitivity to alcohol-directed behaviour. Highly playful rats are more prone to alcohol intake, yet show greater control over alcohol seeking. These findings increase our understanding of the relationship between social development and vulnerability to AUD.

scholarly journals A persistent alcohol cue memory trace drives relapse to alcohol seeking after prolonged abstinence

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (19) ◽  
pp. eaax7060
Author(s):  
Esther Visser ◽  
Mariana R. Matos ◽  
Rolinka J. van der Loo ◽  
Nathan J. Marchant ◽  
Taco J. de Vries ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alcohol Intake ◽  
Memory Trace ◽  
Environmental Cues ◽  
Self Administration ◽  
Alcohol Relapse ◽  
Long Term Storage ◽  
Small Ensemble ◽  
Term Storage ◽  
Alcohol Seeking

Alcohol use disorder is characterized by a high risk of relapse during periods of abstinence. Relapse is often triggered by retrieval of persistent alcohol memories upon exposure to alcohol-associated environmental cues, but little is known about the neuronal circuitry that supports the long-term storage of alcohol cue associations. We found that a small ensemble of neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of mice was activated during cue-paired alcohol self-administration (SA) and that selective suppression of these neurons 1 month later attenuated cue-induced relapse to alcohol seeking. Inhibition of alcohol seeking was specific to these neurons as suppression of a non–alcohol-related or sucrose SA–activated mPFC ensemble did not affect relapse behavior. Hence, the mPFC neuronal ensemble activated during cue-paired alcohol consumption functions as a lasting memory trace that mediates cue-evoked relapse long after cessation of alcohol intake, thereby providing a potential target for treatment of alcohol relapse vulnerability.

A drug-vs-food “choice” self-administration procedure in rats to investigate pharmacological and environmental mechanisms of substance use disorders

2021 ◽  
Vol 354 ◽  
pp. 109110
Author(s):  
E. Andrew Townsend ◽  
Kathryn L. Schwienteck ◽  
Hannah L. Robinson ◽  
Stephen T. Lawson ◽  
Matthew L. Banks
Keyword(s):  
Substance Use ◽  
Substance Use Disorders ◽  
Food Choice ◽  
Self Administration ◽  
Administration Procedure

scholarly journals Perceptual insensitivity to the modulation of interoceptive signals in depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Smith ◽  
◽  
Justin S. Feinstein ◽  
Rayus Kuplicki ◽  
Katherine L. Forthman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Substance Use ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Substance Use Disorders ◽  
Breath Hold ◽  
Healthy Individuals ◽  
Performance Improvements ◽  
Heartbeat Perception ◽  
Minimal Improvement ◽  
Healthy Participants

AbstractThis study employed a series of heartbeat perception tasks to assess the hypothesis that cardiac interoceptive processing in individuals with depression/anxiety (N = 221), and substance use disorders (N = 136) is less flexible than that of healthy individuals (N = 53) in the context of physiological perturbation. Cardiac interoception was assessed via heartbeat tapping when: (1) guessing was allowed; (2) guessing was not allowed; and (3) experiencing an interoceptive perturbation (inspiratory breath hold) expected to amplify cardiac sensation. Healthy participants showed performance improvements across the three conditions, whereas those with depression/anxiety and/or substance use disorder showed minimal improvement. Machine learning analyses suggested that individual differences in these improvements were negatively related to anxiety sensitivity, but explained relatively little variance in performance. These results reveal a perceptual insensitivity to the modulation of interoceptive signals that was evident across several common psychiatric disorders, suggesting that interoceptive deficits in the realm of psychopathology manifest most prominently during states of homeostatic perturbation.

scholarly journals Individual differences in the engagement of habitual control over alcohol seeking predict the development of compulsive alcohol seeking and drinking

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Giuliano ◽  
Mickaël Puaud ◽  
Rudolf N. Cardinal ◽  
David Belin ◽  
Barry J. Everitt
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Alcohol Seeking

scholarly journals Stress vulnerability promotes an alcohol prone phenotype in a preclinical model of sustained depression

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danai Riga ◽  
Leanne JM Schmitz ◽  
Yvar van Mourik ◽  
Witte JG Hoogendijk ◽  
Taco J De Vries ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Defeat ◽  
Preclinical Model ◽  
Self Administration ◽  
Depression Vulnerability ◽  
Stress Vulnerability ◽  
The Social ◽  
Depression Proneness ◽  
Male Wistar Rats ◽  
Alcohol Seeking

AbstractMajor depression and alcohol-related disorders frequently co-occur. Depression severity weighs on the magnitude and persistence of comorbid alcohol use disorder (AUD), with severe implications for disease prognosis. Here, we investigated whether depression vulnerability drives propensity to AUD at the preclinical level. We used the social defeat-induced persistent stress (SDPS) model of chronic depression in combination with operant alcohol self-administration (SA). Male Wistar rats were subjected to social defeat (5 episodes) and prolonged social isolation (~12 weeks) and subsequently classified as SDPS-prone or SDPS-resilient based on their affective and cognitive performance. Using an operant alcohol SA paradigm, acquisition, motivation, extinction and cue-induced reinstatement of alcohol-seeking were examined in the two subpopulations. SDPS-prone animals showed increased alcohol SA, excessive motivation to acquire alcohol, persistent alcohol-seeking despite alcohol unavailability, extinction resistance and increased cue-induced relapse; the latter could be blocked by the α2 adrenoreceptor agonist guanfacine. In SDPS-resilient rats, prior exposure to social defeat increased alcohol SA without affecting any other measures of alcohol-seeking and -taking. Our data revealed that depression proneness confers vulnerability to alcohol, emulating patterns of alcohol dependence seen in human addicts, and that depression resilience to a large extent protects from the development of AUD-like phenotypes. Furthermore, our data suggest that stress exposure alone, independently of depressive symptoms, alters alcohol intake in the long-term.

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