Neuropathic pain is frequently associated with anxiety and major depressive disorders, which considerably impact the overall patient experience. Favoring GABAergic inhibition through matrix has emerged as a promising strategy to restore proper processing of nociceptive affective information in neuropathic states. In this context, non-benzodiazepine anxiolytic etifoxine (EFX), known amplify posi...

Cannabinoid compounds may influence both emotional and cognitive processes depending on the level of environmental aversiveness at the time of drug administration. However, the mechanisms responsible for these responses remain to be elucidated. The present experiments investigated the effects induced by the endocannabinoid transport inhibitor AM404 (0.5-5 mg/kg, i.p.) on both emotional and cogn...

The orally disintegrating tablet (ODT) has shown vast potential as an alternative oral dosage form to conventional tablets wherein they can disintegrate rapidly (?30 s) upon contact with saliva fluid and should have acceptable mouthfeel long their weight doesn’t exceed 500 mg. However, owing the bitterness of several active ingredients, there is a need find suitable ODTs that maintains features...

Distress responses of rats like screams are aversive for other rats. This study was conducted to determine some of the conditions affecting these aversive properties. Eighteen rats were trained to press a lever to obtain food on a FR4 schedule, then assigned to Shock-experienced group (SE). Overshadow group (OS), and Control group (CNT). SE received three 1-second shocks (1 mA) a day for two da...

A behavioral test paradigm that measures the aversive quality of stimulus-evoked pain in an animal model of neuropathic pain (L5 ligation) was tested for sensitivity to (1) different forces (476 and 202 mN) and frequencies (once every 15 or 30 s) of mechanical stimulation to the hyperalgesic paw and (2) different doses of the common antinociceptive compounds morphine (1 and 10 mg/kg) and gabape...

Haptic perception is bidirectionally related to exploratory movements, which means that exploration influences perception, but perception also influences exploration. We can optimize or change exploratory movements according to the perception and/or the task, consciously or unconsciously. This paper presents a psychophysical experiment on active roughness perception to investigate movement chan...

Grooming occurs during/after stress and seems to accompany dearousal. Here, grooming was investigated under testing situations involving different levels of aversiveness, taking advantage of differences among three rat strains in fearfulness/anxiety. Inbred Roman High Avoidance (RHA-I) rats are less anxious/fearful than inbred Roman Low Avoidance (RLA-I). The outbred genetically heterogeneous s...

Paying for goods and services creates disutility for the payer. Based on ideas from behavioral economics, we contend that the disutility of paying can be substantially influenced by the method of payment. We develop a model of the consumer that takes into account phenomena such as the pain of paying, the sunk-cost effect, and self-control issues. In a laboratory experiment we test this model an...