Understanding the stimulus effects of nicotine and bupropion in a drug-drug discriminated goal-tracking task.

Rationale: Bupropion is a non-nicotine medication for smoking cessation that has overlapping stimulus effects with nicotine as demonstrated in drug discrimination studies. Whether these shared stimulus effects will alter acquisition or maintenance of a discrimination between nicotine and bupropion is unknown.

Objective: We sought to test this possibility using the drug discriminated goal-tracking (DGT) task and whether discrimination training history affected generalization and substitution tests.

Menthol blunts the interoceptive discriminative stimulus effects of nicotine in female but not male rats.

Rationale: Menthol is a widely used tobacco constituent that has shown to enhance nicotine's reinforcing effects.

Objective: To determine whether injected menthol also alters nicotine's stimulus effects, we used a drug discrimination task.

Methods: A total of 57 adult Sprague-Dawley rats (28M, 29F) received 20 positive and 20 negative days (intermixed) of discrimination training.

Investigating the interoceptive stimulus effects of injected menthol in rats.

Menthol is a commonly used tobacco constituent that also modulates nicotine reinforcement and metabolism. Little is known about the stimulus effects of menthol that mediate the behavior associated with reinforcement-learning. Our present research explored the interoceptive stimulus effects of intraperitoneally administered menthol in a drug discrimination task.