The prelimbic (PL) and infralimbic (IL) medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) are thought to play opposing roles in drug-seeking behaviour. Specifically, the PL promotes drug-seeking whereas the IL is necessary for the inhibition of drug-seeking during extinction. We studied the roles of the PL, IL and dorsal peduncular PFC (DP) in the expression of context-induced reinstatement, reacquisition and extinction of alcoholic beer-seeking. In context-induced reinstatement (renewal), animals were trained to nosepoke for alcoholic beer (context A), extinguished (context B) and then tested in context A and B. In reacquisition, animals received the same instrumental training and extinction without any contextual manipulation. On test, alcoholic beer was again available and responding was compared with naive controls. Just prior to the test, rats received bilateral infusion of baclofen/muscimol into the PL, IL or DP. Reversible inactivation of the PL attenuated ABA renewal but augmented reacquisition. Reversible inactivation of IL had no effect on the reinstatement or reacquisition of alcoholic beer-seeking and had no effect on extinction expression (ABB and AAA). IL inactivation did, however, increase the latencies with which animals responded on test but only when animals were tested in the extinction context. DP inactivation had no effect on reinstatement or reacquisition. These studies are inconsistent with the view that PL and IL exert opposing effects on drug-seeking. Rather, they support the view that PL is important for retrieval of drug-seeking contingency information and that the use of contextual information is enhanced with IL manipulation.

The retrieval of extinction memories is dependent on contextual cues associated with extinction training. Various forms of response restoration after extinction, such as renewal, reinstatement, and spontaneous recovery, can be viewed as failures to retrieve an extinction memory. It follows that provision of a cue to aid retrieval of the extinction memory should attenuate response restoration or relapse after extinction. Six experiments studied the impact of an extinction retrieval cue (E-cue) on restoration of extinguished alcohol seeking in rats. Rats were trained to respond for alcoholic beer and this responding was then extinguished. Extinction training was accompanied by noncontingent presentations of a 60-s auditory stimulus that served as an E-cue. Presentations of the E-cue on test attenuated ABA renewal of alcohol seeking (Experiment 1) whereas an equally familiar cue from training had no effect (Experiment 2). Presentations of the E-cue had no effect on the reacquisition of alcohol seeking (Experiment 3). The same effects on ABA renewal (Experiments 4 and 6) and reacquisition (Experiment 5) were observed when the E-cue was trained in a response contingent manner during extinction. Taken together these findings show that presentations of an E-cue are able to attenuate the renewal but not reacquisition of alcohol seeking and are interpreted with reference to Bouton's model of extinction (Bouton, 1994a, 1994b, 2004).

We studied the role of context in reacquisition of extinguished reward-seeking. Rats were trained to respond for alcoholic beer, then extinguished and retrained. Reacquisition was faster than acquisition regardless of whether retraining occurred in the original training context, the extinction context, a novel context, or a context with a mixed history of reinforcement. Reacquisition was also rapid after extended extinction training. Nonetheless, context did significantly influence reacquisition via affecting latency to first response: rats took significantly longer to initiate responding when tested in the extinction context. These results suggest that reacquisition of drug and reward seeking is determined by an inhibitory influence caused by the extinction context and a facilitatory influence caused by reintroduction of the reinforcer (Bouton, 1993).

2 -0.4). At 12-month follow-up, improvements were maintained on pain intensity, self-efficacy and three out of eight domains of SF-36. There were distinctive pre-and post-treatment gender differences in these outcomes and overall females showed better short-and long-term outcomes than males. Conclusion: Multidisciplinary pain management using an individualized patient centered approach remains an effective treatment for chronic pain in both the short-(6 month) and long-term (12 month). The distinctive pre-and post-treatment gender differences particularly in the psychological outcomes, suggest that it may be beneficial to further delineate and better manage vulnerable patient subgroups.

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