Mascarin Alixandria T, Mac Ava M, Kallakuri Srinivasu, Greenwald Mark K, Perrine Shane A
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, School of Medicine, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, United States.
Department of Pharmacy Practice, Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, United States.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2025 Jun 10;19:1603564. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2025.1603564. eCollection 2025.
Misuse of drugs and natural rewards, such as food, share common neural pathways and comparably influence behavioral consequences. Food-restriction enhances drug-taking and drug-seeking behaviors in animals, but the effect of food-restriction on cocaine self-administration and cocaine-seeking in both sexes has not been well characterized.
Therefore, the present study investigated differences between food-restricted vs. feeding male and female Wistar rats on the acquisition of cocaine self-administration and cue-induced reinstatement of cocaine-seeking.
Food access sex-dependently altered the acquisition of cocaine self-administration such that food-restricted females, but not males, displayed an escalated intake behavior over time. Only food-restricted females differed significantly between active and inactive lever pressing during the reinstatement of cocaine-seeking session.
Taken together, these results suggest that food-restriction sex-dependently improves learning of cocaine self-administration that persists to alter cocaine-seeking behavior following abstinence.
药物滥用与食物等自然奖励存在共同的神经通路，并对行为后果产生类似影响。食物限制会增强动物的药物摄取和觅药行为，但食物限制对两性可卡因自我给药及可卡因觅求行为的影响尚未得到充分表征。
因此，本研究调查了食物限制与自由进食的雄性和雌性Wistar大鼠在可卡因自我给药获取及线索诱导的可卡因觅求恢复方面的差异。
食物获取对可卡因自我给药的获取有性别依赖性影响，食物限制的雌性大鼠而非雄性大鼠随着时间推移表现出摄入量增加的行为。在可卡因觅求恢复阶段，只有食物限制的雌性大鼠在主动与非主动杠杆按压之间存在显著差异。
综合来看，这些结果表明食物限制对可卡因自我给药学习的改善存在性别依赖性，这种改善在禁欲后持续影响可卡因觅求行为。
