Abstract
Drug-associated cues elicit conditioned responses in human drug users, and are thought to facilitate a drug-seeking behavior. Yet, little is known about how these associations are acquired, or about the specificity of the conditioned response modalities. In this study, healthy, nondependent volunteers (N=90) completed a conditioning paradigm in which they received a moderate dose of methamphetamine paired with one stimulus and placebo with another stimulus, each on two separate occasions. Their responses to these cues were measured with a behavioral preference, self-reported ‘liking’, emotional reactivity, and attentional bias measures, both before and after the conditioning. Following the conditioning procedure, subjects exhibited a behavioral preference, positive emotional reactivity, and attentional bias toward the methamphetamine-associated cue, compared with the placebo stimulus. In addition, subjects who reported greater positive subjective drug effects during the conditioning displayed a more robust conditioning. This work demonstrates that healthy nondependent volunteers readily acquire conditioned responses to neutral stimuli paired with a drug. The procedure has significant value to study individual variation in acquisition of conditioned responses as a possible risk factor for drug taking, and to study the neural basis of conditioned drug responses.
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We gratefully acknowledge Markus Heilig for his valuable intellectual contributions and technical support of this research.
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Mayo, L., de Wit, H. Acquisition of Responses to a Methamphetamine-Associated Cue in Healthy Humans: Self-Report, Behavioral, and Psychophysiological Measures. Neuropsychopharmacol 40, 1734–1741 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2015.21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2015.21
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