Using conditioned place preference to identify relapse prevention medications

Abstract

Stimuli, including contexts, which predict the availability or onset of a drug effect, can acquire conditioned incentive motivational properties. These conditioned properties endure after withdrawal, and can promote drug-seeking which may result in relapse. Conditioned place preference (CPP) assesses the associations between drugs and the context in which they are experienced. Here, we review the potential utility of CPP procedures in rodents and humans to evaluate medications that target conditioned drug-seeking responses. We discuss the translational potential of the CPP procedure from rodents to humans, and review findings with FDA-approved treatments that support the use of CPP to develop relapse-reduction medications. We also discuss challenges and methodological questions in applying the CPP procedure to this purpose. We argue that an efficient and valid CPP procedure in humans may reduce the burden of full clinical trials with drug-abusing patients that are currently required for testing promising treatments.

Hippocampal and Insular Response to Smoking-Related Environments: Neuroimaging Evidence for Drug-Context Effects in Nicotine Dependence

“…The current study validates a paradigm for studying these effects in clinical samples by demonstrating parallel neural circuitry and behavioral responding. As such, our human-subjects paradigm can be used to screen compounds effective in attenuating contextual reinstatement in animals (Napier et al, 2013). In addition, our data demonstrate that environmental cues elicit brain activation that differs in important ways from proximal cues, suggesting these cues may be critical to include in therapies seeking to extinguish or dampen conditioned responding.…”

“…The neural substrates underlying the learning and retrieval of drug-environment associations have been investigated with animal models in which environments are paired with drug effects (eg, conditioned place preference; CPP; (Aguilar et al, 2009;Liu et al, 2008;Napier et al, 2013)) or reinforcement (eg, context-induced reinstatement; CIR; (Fuchs et al, 2008;Marchant et al, 2014)). Neuropharmacological studies of drug-environment associations using these paradigms implicate brain regions broadly involved in conditioned reward including the amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), striatum, and insula (Bossert et al, 2011;Fuchs et al, 2005;McLaughlin and See, 2003;Otis et al, 2014).…”

Acid-sensing ion channels contribute to synaptic transmission and inhibit cocaine-evoked plasticity

“…To test this hypothesis we used cocaine-conditioned place preference, which involves memory of a learned association between the rewarding effects of cocaine and an environmental context, is thought to model the ability of drug-associated environments to elicit craving and relapse, and depends on the NAc 19,20 . We started by testing Asic1a −/− mice.…”

Trace amine-associated receptor 1: A promising target for the treatment of psychostimulant addiction

“…The development and expression of CPP involve different neural mechanisms, and particularly the expression is thought to be related to context-induced relapse (Napier et al, 2013). We provided the first evidence for a critical role of TAAR 1 in mediating cocaine CPP (Thorn et al, 2014a).…”