Incubation of cocaine-craving relates to glutamate over-flow within ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

Craving elicited by drug-associated cues intensifies across protracted drug abstinence - a phenomenon termed "incubation of craving" - and drug-craving in human addicts correlates with frontal cortical hyperactivity. Herein, we employed a rat model of cue-elicited cocaine-craving to test the hypothesis that the time-dependent incubation of cue-elicited cocaine-craving is associated with adaptations in dopamine and glutamate neurotransmission within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Rats were trained to self-administer intravenous cocaine (6 h/day × 10 days) and underwent in vivo microdialysis procedures during 2 h-tests for cue-elicited cocaine-craving at either 3 or 30 days withdrawal.