Goal- and signal-directed incentive: conditioned approach, seeking, and consumption established with unsweetened alcohol in rats

Abstract

These findings replicate and extend the effects of Pavlovian conditioning on ethanol-seeking and support-conditioned incentive theories of addictive behavior. Signals for ethanol influence spatial choice behavior and may be relevant to attentional bias shown to alcohol-associated stimuli in humans.

Individual differences in the attribution of incentive salience to reward-related cues: Implications for addiction

“…There are, however, still very few studies on the extent to which drug-associated cues support a sign-tracking CR (Cunningham and Patel, 2007;Kearns et al, 2006;Krank et al, 2008;Uslaner et al, 2006). Indeed, in a 2005 review Everitt and Robbins duly noted (pg.…”

“…However, there have now been a number of reports that animals do approach discrete cues that have been associated with drug delivery (Cunningham and Patel, 2007;Krank et al, 2008;Uslaner et al, 2006). For example, a US consisting of an orally consumed ethanol/saccharin (Krank, 2003;Tomie, 2001;Tomie et al, 2003) or amphetamine/saccharin solution (Tomie, 2001) can support sign-tracking behavior.…”

Antagonism at NMDA receptors, but not β-adrenergic receptors, disrupts the reconsolidation of pavlovian conditioned approach and instrumental transfer for ethanol-associated conditioned stimuli

“…Consequently, investigations of the reconsolidation of drug-associated memories have focused primarily upon the conditioned reinforcing properties of stimuli associated with drugs of abuse (Lee et al 2005(Lee et al , 2006aMilton et al 2008a, b). However, the use of orally self-administered alcohol, which has an associated consummatory response (drinking), allows conditioned approach and PIT to be studied more readily; ethanol CSs have been shown to support both autoshaping (Krank et al 2008;Tomie et al 2004) and PIT (Krank et al 2008). Therefore, we used 10% ethanol as a reinforcer to investigate whether the reconsolidation of the memories underlying conditioned approach and PIT to CSs associated with a potential drug of abuse depends upon signalling at NMDARs and βARs at memory reactivation.…”

Components of behavioural impulsivity and automatic cue approach predict unique variance in hazardous drinking

“…Individual differences in attentional bias for alcohol-related cues prospectively predict alcohol use among heavy drinking university students (Fadardi and Cox 2008), and the degree of attentional bias predicts relapse or treatment dropout among treatment-seeking alcoholics (Cox et al 2002). With regard to overt behavioural approach elicited by alcohol cues, it has been demonstrated that animals will direct approach behaviours towards cues that have been paired with the availability of alcohol (Krank et al 2008), and several investigators have developed experimental paradigms for studying cue-elicited approach in humans. For example, we have adapted the stimulus response compatibility (SRC) task (De Houwer et al 2001) to study the speed at which heavy and light social drinkers' direct approach and avoidance responses towards alcohol-related pictorial cues.…”