Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, United States of America.
Center for Addiction Sciences and Therapeutics, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2023 Dec 21;18(12):e0296090. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0296090. eCollection 2023.
In humans, frustrating experiences are known to trigger relapse events and individuals with higher frustration intolerance show increased risk of developing substance use disorders (SUDs). Despite this clear relationship, frustration-related behavior is seldom studied concurrently with self-administration behavior in rodent models. A major obstacle has been the lack of robust, quantitative assays of frustration-related operant behavior thus far. In previous work, we identified increased bar press (BP) durations in response to frustrating conditions in rats self-administering natural or drug rewards. Here, to propose BP durations as a measure of frustration-related behavior, we conducted an operant successive negative contrast (oSNC) study and found that increases in BP durations are observed in the absence of increased effort, providing evidence that this is a psychological phenomenon. Moreover, we assess the viability of widespread use of BP duration measurements as a behavioral tool by quantifying performance as it pertains to sensitivity, robustness, replicability, and sex differences. We conclude that increases in BP durations are a highly sensitive psychological response to frustrating conditions and that this measure is robust, replicable, and applicable to both sexes.
在人类中，众所周知，挫败的经历会引发复发事件，而挫折容忍度较高的个体则表现出更高的物质使用障碍（SUD）发病风险。尽管存在这种明确的关系，但在啮齿动物模型中，很少同时研究与挫折相关的行为和自我给药行为。到目前为止，一个主要障碍是缺乏稳健、定量的挫折相关操作性行为检测方法。在之前的工作中，我们发现自我给予天然或药物奖励的大鼠在遇到挫折条件时，按压杠杆的持续时间会延长。在这里，为了将按压杠杆的持续时间作为挫折相关行为的衡量标准，我们进行了一项操作性连续负对比（oSNC）研究，结果发现，在不增加努力的情况下，按压杠杆的持续时间会延长，这证明了这是一种心理现象。此外，我们还通过量化与敏感性、稳健性、可重复性和性别差异相关的性能，评估了将按压杠杆的持续时间测量作为行为工具的广泛应用的可行性。我们的结论是，按压杠杆的持续时间增加是对挫折条件的高度敏感的心理反应，而且这种测量方法具有稳健性、可重复性，并且适用于两性。
