Conditioning following repeated exposure to MDMA in rats: Role in the maintenance of MDMA self-administration.
Behavioral Neuroscience – January 01, 2006
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
MDMA significantly influences behavior, as evidenced by a study where rats self-administered the drug through intravenous infusions. Operant responding increased with higher fixed ratio schedules and decreased when saline replaced MDMA, highlighting the drug's reinforcing properties. After an average of 19 training sessions, the removal of either the light stimulus or MDMA led to gradual declines in responding over 15 days. Notably, omitting both resulted in a dramatic and sustained decrease, indicating that drug-associated cues may strongly condition behavior related to MDMA use.
Abstract
There has been some controversy in the literature concerning the ability of +/-3,4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) to reinforce operant responding in rats. In the present study, operant responding maintained by intravenous MDMA infusions increased when the fixed ratio schedule was increased from 1 to 5, decreased when saline was substituted for MDMA, and increased again when MDMA was reintroduced. During self-administration training, each infusion of MDMA was paired with the illumination of a light stimulus. The role of the continued presentation of this drug-associated stimulus in operant responding was measured in groups of rats that had received comparable exposure (average 19 daily test sessions) to MDMA during training. When either the light stimulus or the drug infusion was omitted, operant responding decreased gradually over the 15-day test period following training. When both the light stimulus and the MDMA infusion were omitted, there was a dramatic decrease in operant responding that persisted for the entire 15-day test period. These findings suggest that cues associated with MDMA develop conditioned properties that might contribute to drug taking.