Nucleus accumbens dopamine depletions make animals highly sensitive to high fixed ratio requirements but do not impair primary food reinforcement
Section snippets
Subjects
A total of 10 adult male Sprague–Dawley rats (Harlan Sprague–Dawley, Indianapolis, IN, USA) were used in this experiment. Rats were housed in a colony maintained at a constant temperature (23°C) with a 12-h light/dark cycle (lights on at 07:00 h). All rats weighed between 290 and 330 g at the beginning of the study. Animals were food-deprived to 85% of their free feeding body weight, but were allowed a modest growth (up to 95% of original body weight) over the course of the study. Water was
Results
Figure 1 displays the total number of lever presses per day for 6-OHDA and vehicle-treated rats across all six lever pressing schedules. For the FR5 schedule, there was not a significant overall effect of 6-OHDA (F(1,8)=3.45, P<0.1), but there was a significant effect of days (F(2,16)=62.7, P<0.01) and a significant treatment group×day interaction (F(2,16)=18.43, P<0.01). Analysis of simple effects to determine the source of the interaction demonstrated that 6-OHDA-treated rats differed from
Discussion
The present results clearly demonstrate that accumbens DA depletions produce effects on lever pressing that are highly dependent upon the ratio requirement of the schedule. Performance on the FR5 schedule was only slightly suppressed by accumbens DA depletions, but the DA-depleted rats recovered rapidly. This is consistent with previous reports of recovery of response rate on FR4 or FR5 schedules after accumbens DA depletions (Salamone et al., 1993b, Aberman and Salamone, 1999). Responding on
Conclusions
In summary, it does not appear as though accumbens DA depletions have substantial effects on operant lever pressing on some schedules because of reduced appetite, or because of sensitivity to differences in molar reinforcement density between different schedules, or impairments in the perception of reinforcement magnitude. Nevertheless, across a broad range of experiments that include the present data, three generalizations can be made. First, on some schedules, such as FR1 or variable-interval
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by a grant to J.D.S. from the United States National Science Foundation, and by a grant to M.C. from Fundacio Caixa Castello-Bancaixa-UJI, Spain.
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