Volitional social interaction prevents drug addiction in rat models

Abstract

Addiction treatment has not been appreciably improved by neuroscientific research. One problem is that mechanistic studies using rodent models do not incorporate volitional social factors, which play a critical role in human addiction. Here, using rats, we introduce an operant model of choice between drugs and social interaction. Independent of sex, drug class, drug dose, training conditions, abstinence duration, social housing, or addiction score in Diagnostic & Statistical Manual IV-based and intermittent access models, operant social reward prevented drug selfadministration. This protection was lessened by delay or punishment of the social reward but neither measure was correlated with the addiction score. Social-choice-induced abstinence also prevented incubation of methamphetamine craving. This protective effect was associated with activation of central amygdala PKCδ-expressing inhibitory neurons and inhibition of anterior insular cortex activity. These findings highlight the need for incorporating social factors into neuroscience-based addiction research and support the wider implantation of socially based addiction treatments.Animal research on addiction is stymied by a translational problem. Despite strides toward understanding circuit and 1,2 molecular mechanisms of addiction, treatment options remain largely unchanged 3 . This impasse is at least partly due to limitations of animal models of

Inflexible habitual decision-making during choice between cocaine and a nondrug alternative

“…In these studies, rats readily quit drug use to express a robust preference for the alternative nondrug reward [26][27][28][29][30][31][32] , even after having escalated their drug intake 27,32 . It was recently shown that rats also preferred social interaction over heroin and methamphetamine, demonstrating that preference for the nondrug alternative is not limited to gustatory rewards 33 . More generally, drug self-administration can be affected by numerous manipulations applied to the drug or to the alternative nondrug reward, such as price, dose or delay 26,27,34 .…”

Individual variation in the attribution of incentive salience to social cues

“…Furthermore, social pressure from peers can induce cravings and promote drug use (Epstein et al, 2009, Lee et al, 2008, and drug users show greater striatal activation during peer conformity to social information . Conversely, social rewards can also acquire enough motivational value to successfully compete with addictive substances and promote voluntary abstinence from drug selfadministration (Venniro et al, 2018). One of the most effective psychotherapies for addiction is coping and social skills training CSST), which teaches social strategies for navigating social interactions, addressing interpersonal problems, and managing craving in response to social/drug-related contexts and cues (Monti and O'Leary, 1999).…”

Simple Behavioral Analysis (SimBA) – an open source toolkit for computer classification of complex social behaviors in experimental animals

“…However, despite the established role of social behaviour in psychiatric disorders and treatments, it remains unclear how social context interact with biological functions to produce protracted and chronic sequalae 10 . These insights depend on experimental animal model systems where detailed behavioral ethograms can be combined with precise manipulations of brain functions to reveal biological causes [12][13][14] .…”