Department of Animals in Science and Society, Division of Behavioural Neuroscience, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, 3584 CG Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med. 2013 Apr 1;3(4):a011932. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a011932.
It is increasingly recognized that studying drug taking in laboratory animals does not equate to studying genuine addiction, characterized by loss of control over drug use. This has inspired recent work aimed at capturing genuine addiction-like behavior in animals. In this work, we summarize empirical evidence for the occurrence of several DSM-IV-like symptoms of addiction in animals after extended drug use. These symptoms include escalation of drug use, neurocognitive deficits, resistance to extinction, increased motivation for drugs, preference for drugs over nondrug rewards, and resistance to punishment. The fact that addiction-like behavior can occur and be studied in animals gives us the exciting opportunity to investigate the neural and genetic background of drug addiction, which we hope will ultimately lead to the development of more effective treatments for this devastating disorder.
人们越来越认识到，在实验室动物身上研究吸毒并不等同于研究真正的成瘾，真正的成瘾以对药物使用失去控制为特征。这激发了最近旨在在动物身上捕捉真正类似成瘾行为的工作。在这项工作中，我们总结了在长期使用药物后，动物出现几种类似于 DSM-IV 成瘾症状的经验证据。这些症状包括药物使用的升级、神经认知缺陷、对消退的抵抗、对药物的动机增加、对药物的偏好超过非药物奖励，以及对惩罚的抵抗。类似成瘾的行为可以在动物身上发生和研究这一事实，为我们提供了一个令人兴奋的机会，来研究药物成瘾的神经和遗传背景，我们希望这最终将导致为这种破坏性疾病开发更有效的治疗方法。
