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The Journal of Neuroscience, December 1, 2000, 20(23):8902-8908

Prenatal Cocaine Exposure Increases Sensitivity to the Attentional Effects of the Dopamine D1 Agonist SKF81297

Lorna E. Bayer¹, Alison Brown¹, Charles F. Mactutus³, Rose M. Booze⁴, and Barbara J. Strupp^{1, 2}

¹ Department of Psychology and ² Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, and ³ Division of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, College of Pharmacy, Tobacco and Health Research Institute, Graduate Center for Toxicology, and ⁴ Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, College of Medicine, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40546

Sensitivity to the attentional effects of SKF81297, a selective full agonist at dopamine D₁ receptors, was assessed in adult rats exposed to cocaine prenatally (via intravenous injections) and controls. The task assessed the ability of the subjects to monitor an unpredictable light cue of either 300 or 700 msec duration and to maintain performance when presented with olfactory distractors. SKF81297 decreased nose pokes before cue presentation and increased latencies and response biases (the tendency to respond to the same port used on the previous trial), suggesting an effect of SKF81297 on the dopamine (DA) systems responsible for response initiation and selection. The cocaine-exposed (COC) and control animals did not differ in sensitivity to the effects of SKF81297 on these measures. In contrast, the COC animals were significantly more sensitive than were controls to the impairing effect of SKF81297 on omission errors, a measure of sustained attention. This pattern of results provides evidence that prenatal cocaine exposure produces lasting changes in the DA system(s) subserving sustained attention but does not alter the DA system(s) underlying response selection and initiation. These findings also provide support for the role of D₁ receptor activation in attentional functioning.

Key words: prenatal cocaine; intravenous injection; catecholamine; dopamine; attention; response initiation; response selection

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Copyright © 2000 Society for Neuroscience  0270-6474/00/20238902-07$05.00/0

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