ReviewValidation crisis in animal models of drug addiction: Beyond non-disordered drug use toward drug addiction
Section snippets
Dependence or addiction: words of choice and choice of words
In current official diagnostic nomenclatures (e.g., 4th version of the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual [DSM] of Mental Disorders), the term “dependence” is preferred to the word “addiction” to label the same behavioral disorder (see Section 1.3 below). However, several authors have recently called for a reversal of preference—a call that will be apparently followed in the forthcoming 5th version of the DSM (Miller and Holden, 2010). As put bluntly by O’Brien
Deconstruction of animal models of cocaine addiction
The goal of this section is to present a brief historical overview of scientific research on intravenous drug self-administration in experimental animals. This overview is not intended to be exhaustive or representative. Its goal is 2-fold: to praise the earlier researchers who have founded the field of animal drug self-administration and to reveal that since its birth, this field has regrettably largely neglected the role of choice in studying and analyzing cocaine addiction in experimental
Having the choice during access to cocaine self-administration
Previous research in rats has shown that concurrent access to a natural rewarding activity during access to cocaine can indeed influence cocaine self-administration (Campbell and Carroll, 2000, Ahmed, 2005). For instance, in a seminal series of experiments, Marilyn Carroll and colleagues showed that concurrent access to water sweetened with saccharin and glucose reduces the proportion of rats that eventually acquire cocaine self-administration and can also decrease the maintenance of cocaine
Choice as a sieve for cocaine addiction
Since the seminal work by Weeks, ample research has established that when no valuable options to drug use are available, most rats readily learn to self-administer cocaine and escalate cocaine intake following extended drug use (Ahmed, in press). In contrast, as shown here, when a valuable behavioral option, even a biologically or physiologically inessential one (i.e., for survival or reproduction), is made available during drug access, most rats readily abstain from cocaine use in favor of the
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the French Research Council (CNRS), the Université Victor-Segalen Bordeaux 2, the National Research Agency (ANR), the Mission Interministerielle de Lutte contre les Drogues et la Toxicomanie (MILDT), the Conseil Regional d’Aquitaine and the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale (FRM). The author thanks the present and past members of his research group for their dedication, commitment and effort. I also thank Dr. Sallouha Aidoudi for her comments on a previous version
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