The protective effect of operant social reward on cocaine self-administration, choice, and relapse is dependent on delay and effort for the social reward.

ABSTRACT: Social reinforcement-based treatments are effective for many, but not all, people with addictions to drugs. We recently developed an operant rat model that mimics features of one such treatment, the community-reinforcement approach. In this model, rats uniformly choose social interaction over methamphetamine or heroin. Abstinence induced by social preference protects against the incubation of drug-seeking that would emerge during forced abstinence. Here, we determined whether these findings generalize to cocaine and whether delaying or increasing effort for social interaction could reveal possibly human-relevant individual differences in responsiveness. We trained male and female rats for social self-administration (6 days) and then for cocaine self-administration, initially for 2-h/day fo

SUBMITTER: Venniro M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8580997 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature