Generalized cue reactivity in rat dopamine neurons after opioids.

ABSTRACT: Cue reactivity is the maladaptive neurobiological and behavioral response upon exposure to drug cues and is a major driver of relapse. A widely accepted assumption is that drugs of abuse result in disparate dopamine responses to cues that predict drug vs. natural rewards. The leading hypothesis is that drug-induced dopamine release represents a persistently positive reward prediction error that causes runaway enhancement of dopamine responses to drug cues, leading to their pathological overvaluation. However, this hypothesis has not been directly tested. Here, we develop Pavlovian and operant procedures in male rats to measure firing responses within the same dopamine neurons to drug versus natural reward cues, which we find to be similarly enhanced compared to cues predicting natural rewa

SUBMITTER: Lehmann CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11697388 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature