Volume 9, Issue 4 pp. 285-313

What We Have Learned about Addiction from Animal Models of Drug Self-Administration

Eliot L. Gardner Ph.D.

Corresponding Author

Eliot L. Gardner Ph.D.

From the Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Baltimore, Md.

Address correspondence to Dr. Gardner, Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Building C; Room 272, 5500 Nathan Shock Dr., Baltimore, MD 21224. E-mail: [email protected].Search for more papers by this author
First published: 18 February 2010
Citations: 94

Abstract

Self-administration of addictive drugs in laboratory animals has been widely used for decades as a tool for studying behavioral, neurobiological, and genetic factors in addiction. From such studies has come an enormous amount of information on brain mechanisms involved in addiction, on vulnerability factors in the addictive process, and on possible pharmacotherapeutic treatments for addiction. Modifications of the laboratory animal self-administration paradigmö including progressive ratio break-point models and the “reinstatement” model of relapse to drug-seeking behaviorö are currently increasing our knowledge of incentive motivational factors in addiction and of the mechanisms underlying relapse to drug self-administration behavior.

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