Repeated Cocaine Exposure Attenuates the Desire to Actively Avoid: A Novel Active Avoidance Runway Task.

Drug addiction is a disorder in which drug seeking persists despite aversive consequences. While it is well documented in animal models of drug sensitization that repeated drug exposure enhances positive incentive motivation for drug and natural reinforcers, its effect on negative incentive motivation, defined here as the motivation to avoid a cued aversive outcome, remains an open question. In the present study, we designed a novel active avoidance (AA) runway paradigm to assess the effects of repeated cocaine exposure on the to avoid an aversive outcome.

Lipoic acid and haloperidol-induced vacuous chewing movements: Implications for prophylactic antioxidant use in tardive dyskinesia.

Tardive dyskinesia (TD), a potentially irreversible antipsychotic (AP)-related movement disorder, is a risk with all currently available antipsychotics. AP-induced vacuous chewing movements (VCMs) in rats, a preclinical model of TD, can be attenuated by antioxidant-based treatments although there is a shortage of well-designed studies. Lipoic acid (LA) represents a candidate antioxidant for the treatment of oxidative stress-related nervous system disorders; accordingly, its effects on AP-induced VCMs and striatal oxidative stress were examined.

Atypical antipsychotics and effects on feeding: from mice to men.

Rationale: So-called atypical antipsychotics (AAPs) are associated with varying levels of weight gain and associated metabolic disturbances, which in patients with serious mental illness (SMI) have been linked to non-compliance and poor functional outcomes. Mechanisms underlying AAP-induced metabolic abnormalities are only partially understood. Antipsychotic-induced weight gain may occur as a result of increases in food intake and/or changes in feeding.