These experiments examined the effects of posttrial peripheral and intra-amygdala injections of the cholinergic muscarinic receptor agonist oxotremorine on memory consolidation underlying extinction of amphetamine conditioned place preference (CPP) behavior. Male Long-Evans rats were initially trained and tested for an amphetamine (2 mg/kg) CPP. Rats were subsequently given limited extinction training, followed by immediate posttrial peripheral or intrabasolateral amygdala injections of oxotremorine. A second CPP test was then administered, and the amount of time spent in the previously amphetamine-paired and saline-paired apparatus compartments was recorded. Peripheral (0.07 or 0.01 mg/kg) or intra-amygdala (10 g/0.5µL) postextinction trial injections of oxotremorine facilitated CPP extinction. Oxotremorine injections that were delayed 2 h posttrial training did not enhance CPP extinction, indicating a time-dependent effect of the drug on memory consolidation processes. The findings indicate that memory consolidation for extinction of approach behavior to environmental stimuli previously paired with drug reward can be facilitated by posttrial peripheral or intrabasolateral amygdala administration of a cholinergic agonist.In the conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm, the rewarding properties of a treatment are assessed by measuring approach behavior to environmental cues paired previously with the affective consequences of treatment administration. As numerous drugs with abuse potential in humans reliably induce a CPP in experimental animals, this task has been used extensively to investigate the neurobiological bases of drug reward (for reviews, see Carr et al. 1989;Tzschentke 1998). Following pairings of a drug treatment with a specific environmental context, the expression of a CPP is assessed on a treatment-free test day. Therefore, CPP behavior ultimately involves acquisition, consolidation, and retrieval of stimulus-reward memory for an association between environmental stimuli and the affective state produced by a treatment (White and Carr 1985;Hsu et al. 2002).Extinction of memories mediating the control of approach behavior to environmental cues that have been associated with rewarding drug treatments represents a potentially significant therapeutic approach to human drug addiction. Importantly, several behavioral studies indicate that memory for CPPs is subject to extinction, as nonrewarded exposure to environmental contexts previously paired with rewarding drug treatments reduces subsequent CPP behavior (Bardo et al. 1986; Calcagnetti and Schecter 1993;Mueller and Stewart 2000;Parker and McDonald 2000;Itzhak and Martin 2001;Lu et al. 2002). Although extinction of CPP behavior has been demonstrated in several studies, the neurobiological basis of extinction in this task has not been extensively investigated. Several lines of evidence indicate that extinction involves new learning, rather than simple forgetting or erasure of original learning (see Bouton 1993;Rescorla 2001). Therefore, we have re...