Bevins Rick A, Barrett Scott T, Polewan Robert J, Pittenger Steven T, Swalve Natashia, Charntikov Sergios
Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0308, USA.
Behav Processes. 2012 May;90(1):28-33. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2011.10.020. Epub 2011 Nov 24.
Learning involving interoceptive stimuli likely plays an important role in many diseases and psychopathologies. Within this area, there has been extensive research investigating the interoceptive stimulus effects of abused drugs. In this pursuit, behavioral pharmacologists have taken advantage of what is known about learning processes and adapted the techniques to investigate the behavioral and receptor mechanisms of drug stimuli. Of particular interest is the nicotine stimulus and the use of the two-lever operant drug discrimination task and the Pavlovian drug discriminated goal-tracking task. There is strong concordance between the two methods when using "standard" testing protocols that minimize learning on test days. For example, ABT-418, nornicotine, and varenicline all fully evoked nicotine-appropriate responding. Notably, research from our laboratory with the discriminated goal-tracking task has used an alternative testing protocol. This protocol assesses stimulus substitution based on how well extinction learning using a non-nicotine ligand transfers back to the nicotine stimulus. These findings challenge conclusions based on more "standard" testing procedures (e.g., ABT-418 is not nicotine-like). As a starting point, we propose Thurstone scaling as a quantitative method for more precisely comparing transfer of extinction across doses, experiments, and investigators. We close with a discussion of future research directions and potential implications of the research for understanding interoceptive stimuli.
涉及内感受性刺激的学习可能在许多疾病和精神病理学中发挥重要作用。在这一领域，已经有广泛的研究来调查滥用药物的内感受性刺激效应。在这一研究过程中，行为药理学家利用了已知的学习过程，并采用相关技术来研究药物刺激的行为和受体机制。特别令人感兴趣的是尼古丁刺激以及双杠杆操作性药物辨别任务和巴甫洛夫式药物辨别目标追踪任务的应用。当使用能将测试日的学习最小化的“标准”测试方案时，这两种方法之间有很强的一致性。例如，ABT - 418、去甲烟碱和伐尼克兰都能完全引发与尼古丁相符的反应。值得注意的是，我们实验室使用辨别目标追踪任务的研究采用了另一种测试方案。该方案基于使用非尼古丁配体的消退学习能多好地转移回尼古丁刺激来评估刺激替代。这些发现挑战了基于更“标准”测试程序得出的结论（例如，ABT - 418不像尼古丁）。作为一个起点，我们提出瑟斯顿量表法作为一种定量方法，用于更精确地比较不同剂量、实验和研究者之间的消退转移情况。最后，我们讨论了未来的研究方向以及该研究对理解内感受性刺激的潜在意义。
