Fentanyl reinforcement history has sex-specific effects on multi-step decision-making.

ABSTRACT: It is commonly thought that drug addiction involves a transition to habitual control of action, where the choice to consume drugs becomes automatized and reflects a failure to deliberate over possible negative outcomes. Determining whether the pursuit of addictive drugs is habitual is hampered by a lack of behavior assessments suitable for use during a bout of actual drug seeking. Therefore, to understand how variable histories of drug reinforcement might affect goal-directed and habitual pursuit of drug, we trained rats to perform a multi-step decision-making task to earn oral fentanyl and sucrose rewards following extensive pretraining with either fentanyl or sucrose. Importantly, this task allowed for independent measurements of goal-directed and habitual choice characteristics during o

SUBMITTER: Garr E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12157516 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature