Université de Bordeaux, Institut des Maladies Neurodégénératives/CNRS UMR 5293, F-33000 Bordeaux, France.
Neuroscience. 2012 Jun 1;211:107-25. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2011.08.014. Epub 2011 Aug 10.
Research involving animal models of drug addiction can be viewed as a sort of reverse psychiatry. Contrary to clinicians who seek to treat addicted people to become and remain abstinent, researchers seek to make drug-naïve animals addicted to a drug with known addictive properties in humans. The goals of this research are to better understand the neuroscience of drug addiction and, ultimately, to translate this knowledge into effective treatments for people with addiction. The present review will not cover the vast literature that has accumulated over the past 50 years on animal models of drug addiction. It is instead more modestly devoted to recent research spanning the past decade on drug self-administration-based models of addiction in the rat (the animal species most frequently used in the field), with a special focus on current efforts to model compulsive cocaine use as opposed to nonaddictive use. Surprisingly, it turns out that modeling compulsive cocaine use in rats is possible but more difficult than previously thought. In fact, it appears that resilience to cocaine addiction is the norm in rats. As in human cocaine users, only few individual rats would be vulnerable. This conclusion has several important implications for future research on the neuroscience of cocaine addiction and on preclinical medication development.
涉及药物成瘾动物模型的研究可以被视为一种反向精神病学。与试图治疗成瘾者使其保持戒断的临床医生不同，研究人员试图使从未接触过药物的动物对人类具有已知成瘾性的药物产生成瘾。这项研究的目的是更好地了解药物成瘾的神经科学，并最终将这些知识转化为对成瘾者有效的治疗方法。本综述不会涵盖过去 50 年来在药物成瘾动物模型方面积累的大量文献。相反，它更侧重于过去十年中在大鼠（该领域最常用的动物物种）中基于药物自我给药的成瘾模型的最新研究，特别关注目前努力模拟强迫性可卡因使用而不是非成瘾性使用。令人惊讶的是，事实证明，在大鼠中模拟强迫性可卡因使用是可能的，但比以前想象的要困难。事实上，在大鼠中，对可卡因成瘾的抵抗力似乎是常态。与人类可卡因使用者一样，只有少数个体大鼠容易受到影响。这一结论对可卡因成瘾神经科学的未来研究和临床前药物开发具有重要意义。
