Effects of prior cocaine versus morphine or heroin self-administration on extinction learning driven by overexpectation versus omission of reward.

Background: Addiction is characterized by an inability to stop using drugs, despite adverse consequences. One contributing factor to this compulsive drug taking could be the impact of drug use on the ability to extinguish drug seeking after changes in expected outcomes. Here, we compared effects of cocaine, morphine, and heroin self-administration on two forms of extinction learning: standard extinction driven by reward omission and extinction driven by reward overexpectation.

Methods: In experiment 1, we trained rats to self-administer cocaine, morphine, or sucrose for 3 hours per day (limited access). In experiment 2, we trained rats to self-administer heroin or sucrose for 12 hours per day (extended access). Three weeks later, we trained the rats to associate several cues with palatable food reward, after which we assessed extinction of the learned Pavlovian response, first by pairing two cues together in the overexpectation procedure and later by omitting the food reward.

Results: Rats trained under limited access conditions to self-administer sucrose or morphine demonstrated normal extinction in response to both overexpectation and reward omission, whereas cocaine-experienced rats or rats trained to self-administer heroin under extended access conditions exhibited normal extinction in response to reward omission but failed to show extinction in response to overexpectation.

Conclusions: Here we show that cocaine and heroin can induce long-lasting deficits in the ability to extinguish reward seeking. These deficits were not observed in a standard extinction procedure but instead only affected extinction learning driven by a more complex phenomenon of overexpectation.