Animal Models of Addiction

Abstract

Drug addiction is a chronic brain disease considered to result from a series of transitions from voluntary use in search of a hedonic effect, to loss of control over this behavior, and ultimately to compulsive behavior. Important in the context of mental illness is that substance use disorders are comorbid with many psychiatric diseases, including depression, anxiety and schizophrenia. In current research on addiction, animal models recapitulate the phenotypes contributing to abuse susceptibility through initial drug taking, habitual drug taking, abstinence and finally relapse. These models have begun to unravel the molecular, cellular, and behavioral adaptations regulating addictive behaviors in research which has greatly enriched our understanding of the neurocircuitry mediating learning, motivation, mood and stress. This chapter systematically explores animal models that contribute insights to addiction behaviors including, reward, reinforcement, abstinence, relapse, and susceptibility for initiating additive behaviors.

One Is Not Enough: Understanding and Modeling Polysubstance Use

“…Behavioral models of drug addiction are used to examine the neurobiological underpinnings of the development, maintenance and relapse to drug use. The most commonly used models are locomotor sensitization (a progressive and persistent increase in locomotor responses to the same dose of a drug), conditioned place preference (CPP; a test of drug reward measured as an increase in time spent in a drug-paired chamber) and drug self-administration (response-contingent intake of drug) (see Spanagel, 2017;Kuhn et al, 2019 for review). Experimental designs using these models vary across a number of pharmacological and non-pharmacological parameters including contingency of drug use, amount of access to drug, context associated with drug use, and routes of administration.…”