BACKGROUND Environmental factors may modulate sensitization to the locomotor-activating effects of psychostimulants. In addition, some parameters of locomotor activity seem to be more sensitive to detect cocaine-induced behavioral sensitization. We examined how novelty and conditioning can modulate a previously described rapid-onset type of behavioral sensitization to amphetamine (AMP) in mice,...

Repeated administration of cocaine results in the development of behavioral sensitization, accompanied by a decrease in excitatory synaptic strength in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) through an unknown mechanism. Furthermore, glial cells in the NAc are activated by drugs of abuse, but the contribution of glia to the development of addictive behaviors is unknown. Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α)...

Neural synchrony exhibits temporal variability and, therefore, the temporal patterns of synchronization and desynchronization may have functional relevance. This study employs novel time-series analysis to explore how neural signals become transiently phase locked and unlocked in the theta frequency band in prefrontal cortex and hippocampus of awake, behaving rats during repeated injections of ...

GOAL To investigate the effect of luteolin on methamphetamine (MA)-induced behavioral sensitization and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signal transduction pathway activation in mice. METHODS Mice received a single dose of MA to induce hyperactivity or repeated intermittent intraperitoneal injections of MA to establish an MA-induced behavioral sensitization mouse model. The effect of ...

Repeated doses of cocaine or amphetamine lead to long-lasting behavioral manifestations that include enhanced responses termed sensitization. Although biochemical mechanisms that underlie these manifestations currently remain largely unknown, new protein synthesis has been implicated in several of these neuroadaptive processes. To seek candidate biochemical mechanisms for these drug-induced neu...

Background Progressive augmentation of behavioral response following repeated psychostimulant administrations is known as behavioral sensitization, and is an experimental indicator of a drug’s liability for abuse (Robinson and Berridge, 1993; Dafny and Yang, 2006). It is known that Ritalin or methylphenidate (MPD), a drug used to treat Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), induces se...

When ovariectomized female rats receive estrogen, the response to the psychomotor stimulants amphetamine or cocaine is enhanced. Estrous cycle-dependent differences in amphetamine-stimulated behaviors and striatal dopamine release are also noted. Intact female rats exhibit a greater behavioral response to amphetamine on estrus than they do on other days of the cycle. Ovariectomy results in atte...

Although nicotine is generally considered to be the main compound responsible for addictive properties of tobacco, experimental data indicate that nicotine does not exhibit all the characteristics of other substances of abuse. We recently showed that a pretreatment with mixed irreversible monoamine oxidases inhibitors (MAOIs), such as tranylcypromine, triggers a locomotor response to nicotine i...

Glutamatergic systems, including AMPA receptors (AMPARs), are involved in opiate-induced neuronal and behavioral plasticity, although the mechanisms underlying these effects are not fully understood. In the present study, we investigated the effects of repeated morphine administration on AMPAR expression, synaptic plasticity, and context-dependent behavioral sensitization to morphine. We found ...

Behavioral sensitization to psychomotor stimulants has been shown to be accompanied by a number of alterations in the mesoaccumbens dopamine (DA) system, including DA autoreceptor subsensitivity in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), postsynaptic D1 receptor supersensitivity in the nucleus accumbens (NAc), and augmentation of the DA-releasing effects of stimulants in the NAc. The present study ex...