Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40536, USA.
Drug Alcohol Depend. 2013 May 1;129(3):240-6. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2013.02.024. Epub 2013 Mar 26.
Social interaction can serve as a natural reward that attenuates drug reward in rats; however, it is unknown if age or housing conditions alter the choice between social interaction and drug.
Individually- and pair-housed adolescent and adult male rats were tested using conditioned place preference (CPP) in separate experiments in which: (1) social interaction was conditioned against no social interaction; (2) amphetamine (AMPH; 1mg/kg, s.c.) was conditioned against saline; or (3) social interaction was conditioned against AMPH.
Social interaction CPP was obtained only in individually-housed adolescents, whereas AMPH CPP was obtained in both individually-housed adolescents and adults; however, the effect of AMPH was not statistically significant in pair-housed adults. When allowed to choose concurrently between compartments paired with either social interaction or AMPH, individually-housed adolescents preferred the compartment paired with social interaction, whereas pair-housed adolescents preferred the compartment paired with AMPH. Regardless of housing condition, adults showed a similar preference for the compartments paired with either social interaction or AMPH.
Although some caution is needed in interpreting cross-experiment comparisons, the overall results suggest that individually-housed adolescents were most sensitive to the rewarding effect of social interaction, and this hypersensitivity to social reward effectively competed with AMPH reward.
社会互动可以作为一种天然奖励，减弱大鼠对药物的奖励；然而，尚不清楚年龄或住房条件是否会改变大鼠对社会互动和药物的选择。
在单独的实验中，使用条件位置偏好（CPP）测试了单独和成对饲养的青少年和成年雄性大鼠，其中：（1）社会互动是在没有社会互动的情况下形成条件反射；（2）安非他命（AMPH；1mg/kg，皮下注射）是在盐水条件下形成条件反射；或（3）社会互动是在 AMPH 条件下形成条件反射。
只有单独饲养的青少年才能获得社会互动 CPP，而 AMPH CPP 则在单独饲养的青少年和成年大鼠中都能获得；然而，AMPH 在成对饲养的成年大鼠中的效果没有统计学意义。当允许在与社会互动或 AMPH 配对的隔间中同时选择时，单独饲养的青少年更喜欢与社会互动配对的隔间，而成对饲养的青少年则更喜欢与 AMPH 配对的隔间。无论住房条件如何，成年大鼠对与社会互动或 AMPH 配对的隔间表现出相似的偏好。
尽管在解释跨实验比较时需要谨慎，但总体结果表明，单独饲养的青少年对社会互动的奖励作用最为敏感，这种对社会奖励的过度敏感有效地与 AMPH 奖励竞争。
