Abstract
There is increasing evidence that genetic factors can influence individual differences in vulnerability to drugs of abuse1,2. Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT), acting through many receptors can modulate the activity of neural reward pathways and thus the effects of various drugs of abuse3,4,5,6,7,8. Here we examine the effects of cocaine in mice lacking one of the serotonin-receptor subtypes, the 5-HT1B receptor9. We show that mice lacking 5-HT1B display increased locomotor responses to cocaine and that they are more motivated to self-administer cocaine. We propose that even drug-naive 5-HT1B-knockout mice are in a behavioural and biochemical state that resembles that of wild-type mice sensitized to cocaine by repeated exposure to the drug. This altered state might be responsible for their increased vulnerability to cocaine.
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Acknowledgements
We thank E. Gardner and J. Chen for biochemical characterization of the mice, R. Aton for help with self-administration studies, and R. Yarmolinksy for help with preparation of the figures. This work was supported by grants from NIDA, Bristol-Meyers, and a HHMI predoctoral fellowship (K.S.-L.)
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Rocha, B., Scearce-Levie, K., Lucas, J. et al. Increased vulnerability to cocaine in mice lacking the serotonin-1B receptor. Nature 393, 175–178 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/30259
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/30259
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