Name: a general method for evaluating incubation of sucrose craving in rats
Uploaded: 2011-11-04T12:00:00
Description: Watch this Scientific Journal Video about A General Method for Evaluating Incubation of Sucrose Craving in Rats at JoVE.com

Production of this manuscript and video was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse/National Institutes of Health grant R15 DA016285-02, the Western Washington University Biomedical Research Activities in Neuroscience Initiative, and Western Washington University.

1. Animal Subjects
<ol>
 <li>Male Long-Evans rats are 3 months old at the start of a study. Rats are Simonsen-derived (Gilroy, California, USA) bred in the Western Washington University vivarium and are housed individually on a 12-h reverse day/night cycle (lights off at 0700) with Purina Mills Inc. Mazuri Rodent Pellets (Gray Summit, MO, USA) and water available ad libitum.</li>
 <li>All training and testing takes place between 0900-1300 with cohorts of rats always trained and tested at the same time daily.</li>
 <li>...

<ol>
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The procedures we describe here could be identified as reinstatement procedures, although this is technically inaccurate as lever pressing for the cue is not extinguished prior to the craving test session. In a typical reinstatement procedure, responding with reward-paired cues is extinguished and then "reinstated" with administration of a non-contingent presentation of the reward (priming-induced reinstatement) or a stressor such as footshock (stress-induced reinstatement) 11. The extinction of lever pressi...

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<td>Enrichment Cage 		</td>
<td>Quality Cage Company</td>
<td>FH-36&frac12;T-N</td>
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<td>Operant Chamber 		</td>
<td>Med Associates</td>
<td>MED-008-CT-B3</td>
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<td>SCH 23390		</td>
<td>Sigma</td>
<td>D054</td>
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a general method for evaluating incubation of sucrose craving in rats

For someone on a food-restricted diet, food craving in response to food-paired cues may serve as a key behavioral transition point between abstinence and relapse to food taking 1. Food craving conceptualized in this way is akin to drug craving in response to drug-paired cues. A rich literature has been developed around understanding the behavioral and neurobiological determinants of drug craving; we and others have been focusing recently on translating techniques from basic addiction research to better understand addiction-like behaviors related to food 2-4.
As done in previous studies of drug craving, we examine sucrose craving behavior by utilizing a rat model of relapse. In this model, rats self-administer either drug or food in sessions over several days. In a session, lever responding delivers the reward along with a tone+light stimulus. Craving behavior is then operationally defined as responding in a subsequent session where the reward is not available. Rats will reliably respond for the tone+light stimulus, likely due to its acquired conditioned reinforcing properties 5. This behavior is sometimes referred to as sucrose seeking or cue reactivity. In the present discussion we will use the term "sucrose craving" to subsume both of these constructs.
In the past decade, we have focused on how the length of time following reward self-administration influences reward craving. Interestingly, rats increase responding for the reward-paired cue over the course of several weeks of a period of forced-abstinence. This "incubation of craving" is observed in rats that have self-administered either food or drugs of abuse 4,6. This time-dependent increase in craving we have identified in the animal model may have great potential relevance to human drug and food addiction behaviors.
Here we present a protocol for assessing incubation of sucrose craving in rats. Variants of the procedure will be indicated where craving is assessed as responding for a discrete sucrose-paired cue following extinction of lever pressing within the sucrose self-administration context (Extinction without cues) or as responding for sucrose-paired cues in a general extinction context (Extinction with cues).

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about A General Method for Evaluating Incubation of Sucrose Craving in Rats at JoVE.com

A General Method for Evaluating Incubation of Sucrose Craving in Rats

Responding for food or drug-paired cues increases over the course of a period of abstinence and this may relate to an increased susceptibility to relapse behaviors. Here we detail a procedure for evaluating this "incubation of craving" in rats that have self-administered sucrose.

For someone on a food-restricted diet, food craving in response to food-paired cues may serve as a key behavioral transition point between abstinence and ...

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