Operant responding for a visual reinforcer in rats is enhanced by noncontingent nicotine: implications for nicotine self-administration and reinforcement

Abstract

Nicotine influences operant behavior in two ways: by acting as a primary reinforcer when it is contingent upon behavior, and by directly potentiating the reinforcing properties of other stimuli through a nonassociative mechanism. Nicotine self-administration and smoking may be largely dependent upon this later action.

The effects of varenicline on methamphetamine self-administration and drug-primed reinstatement in male rats

“…Recall that timeout stimuli including illumination of the house light and lever retraction were present throughout the experiment. Previous research has clearly shown that nicotine can enhance weakly reinforcing sensory stimuli (Donny et al, 2003; Chaudhri et al, 2006). More recently, this enhancement effect has been demonstrated with other nAChR agonists including varenicline (Barrett, 2014; Schassburger et al, 2015).…”

Metabotropic Glutamate 5 Receptor (mGluR5) Antagonists Decrease Nicotine Seeking, But Do Not Affect the Reinforcement Enhancing Effects of Nicotine

“…First, nicotine directly strengthens operant responding (primary reinforcing effect, see Chaudhri et al, 2006). Second, nicotine enhances the incentive value of reinforcing nonpharmacological stimuli Donny et al, 2003;Palmatier et al, 2006). The dual reinforcing effects of nicotine raise important questions about pharmacological smoking cessation aides, namely, how do these therapies affect these two distinct actions of nicotine?…”

“…One reason for this may be the complex motivational effects of nicotine; smoking (Rose et al, 2003) and nicotine selfadministration (Donny et al, 2003) are behaviors that depend on more than simple primary reinforcement by nicotine. For example, in rodent self-administration we have found that nicotine has a potent 'reinforcement enhancing' effect in which drug administration increases the rate of responding for reinforcing sensory stimuli Donny et al, 2003). This enhancing effect is thought to derive from a change in the reinforcing properties of the stimulus (Palmatier et al, 2007b).…”

“…In this paradigm, rats have concurrent access to two response options; making one response (eg pressing the left lever) results in nicotine delivery, making the other response (eg pressing the right lever) results in presentation of a reinforcing visual stimulus (VS). When these contingencies are in force, responding for nicotine occurs at low rates because the drug alone is a relatively weak reinforcement (Donny et al, 2003), whereas responding for VS occurs at higher rates than for a VS-only control group because VS-derived reinforcement is enhanced by the self-administered nicotine (Palmatier et al, , 2007a. Using this model to dissociate the two reinforcementrelated effects of nicotine should isolate the nature of the effect of potential pharmacotherapies on operant behavior.…”

Complex interactions between nicotine and nonpharmacological stimuli reveal multiple roles for nicotine in reinforcement

“…This dissertation will review the utility of the drug selfadministration paradigm in extending our understanding of nicotine reinforcement. Recent data demonstrating an interaction between nicotine and nonpharmacological stimuli will be presented to illustrate the novel hypothesis that nicotine reinforcement derives from at least two sources: 1) the primary reinforcing properties of nicotine, an action that requires response-dependent drug administration, and 2) the more prominent ability of nicotine to enhance operant responding for reinforcing non-nicotine stimuli, an action that does not require a contingent relationship between drug administration and reinforced operant behavior (see Table 1; Donny et al 2003).…”