Chronic Exposure to Methamphetamine Disrupts Reinforcement-Based Decision Making in Rats.

ABSTRACT: The persistent use of psychostimulant drugs, despite the detrimental outcomes associated with continued drug use, may be because of disruptions in reinforcement-learning processes that enable behavior to remain flexible and goal directed in dynamic environments. To identify the reinforcement-learning processes that are affected by chronic exposure to the psychostimulant methamphetamine (MA), the current study sought to use computational and biochemical analyses to characterize decision-making processes, assessed by probabilistic reversal learning, in rats before and after they were exposed to an escalating dose regimen of MA (or saline control). The ability of rats to use flexible and adaptive decision-making strategies following changes in stimulus-reward contingencies was significantly i

SUBMITTER: Groman SM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5809784 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature