The protective effect of operant social reward on cocaine self-administration, choice, and relapse is dependent on delay and effort for the social reward

Hot Off the Press – August 24, 2021

In humans who use addictive drugs, social-reinforcement-based treatments can protect against drug use and relapse, but not in all patients. We used a new operant rat model that mimics features of one such treatment, the community-reinforcement approach; having previously shown that rats choose social reinforcement over heroin or methamphetamine, we extended the procedure to cocaine. Additionally, we delayed the social reward, or increased the effort to obtain it, to elicit interindividual variability in responding. We show that operant social interaction protects against continued cocaine taking and seeking in male and female rats in two addiction models: escalation and intermittent-access drug self-administration. We also showed that individual differences in cocaine versus social reward choice emerge by increasing the delay for both rewards or social reward alone, or the response requirements (effort) to obtain the social reward. This human-relevant choice procedure can be used to identify mechanisms of individual differences in addiction vulnerability and to identify medications for people who benefit less from the protective effect of rewarding social interaction on addiction.

Publication Information

Venniro, Marco; Panlilio, Leigh V.; Epstein, David H.; Shaham, Yavin

The protective effect of operant social reward on cocaine self-administration, choice, and relapse is dependent on delay and effort for the social reward Journal Article

In: Neuropsychopharmacology, 2021, ISBN: 1740-634X.

Abstract | Links

@article{Venniro:2021vc,

title = {The protective effect of operant social reward on cocaine self-administration, choice, and relapse is dependent on delay and effort for the social reward},

author = {Marco Venniro and Leigh V. Panlilio and David H. Epstein and Yavin Shaham},

url = {https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34400784/},

doi = {10.1038/s41386-021-01148-6},

isbn = {1740-634X},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-08-16},

journal = {Neuropsychopharmacology},

abstract = {Social reinforcement-based treatments are effective for many, but not all, people with addictions to drugs. We recently developed an operant rat model that mimics features of one such treatment, the community-reinforcement approach. In this model, rats uniformly choose social interaction over methamphetamine or heroin. Abstinence induced by social preference protects against the incubation of drug-seeking that would emerge during forced abstinence. Here, we determined whether these findings generalize to cocaine and whether delaying or increasing effort for social interaction could reveal possibly human-relevant individual differences in responsiveness. We trained male and female rats for social self-administration (6 days) and then for cocaine self-administration, initially for 2-h/day for 4 days, and then for 12-h/day continuously or intermittently for 8 days. We assessed relapse to cocaine seeking after 1 and 15 days. Between tests, the rats underwent either forced abstinence or social-choice-induced abstinence. After establishing stable social preference, we manipulated the delay for both rewards or for social reward alone, or the response requirements (effort) for social reward. Independent of cocaine-access conditions and sex, operant social interaction inhibited cocaine self-administration and prevented incubation of cocaine seeking. Preference for social access was decreased by the delay of both rewards or social reward alone, or by increased response requirements for social reward, with notable individual variability. This choice procedure can identify mechanisms of individual differences in an animal model of cocaine use and could thereby help screen medications for people who are relatively unresponsive to treatments based on rewarding social interaction.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}