Potency of SCH 23390 for decreasing sucrose intake in rat pups depends on mode of ingestion

Role of the D1 receptor for the dopamine agonist-induced one-trial behavioral sensitization of preweanling rats

RATIONALE

The neural mechanisms mediating the ontogeny of behavioral sensitization are poorly understood.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of the present study was to determine the role of the D1 receptor for the induction of dopamine agonist-induced behavioral sensitization during the preweanling period.

METHODS

In the first experiment, the early ontogeny of R-propylnorapomorphine (NPA)-induced behavioral sensitization was examined by pretreating male and female rats with saline or NPA (0.5, 1, or 2 mg/kg, intraperitoneally (IP)) before placement in activity chambers on postnatal day (PD) 12, 16, 20, or 24. One day later, rats were tested with lower doses of NPA and the occurrence of locomotor sensitization was determined. In subsequent experiments, rats were injected with saline or the D1 receptor antagonist SCH23390 (0.1, 0.5, 1, or 5 mg/kg, IP) 0, 15, 30, or 60 min before cocaine, methamphetamine (METH), or NPA pretreatment. The next day, rats were tested with the same dopamine agonist again and sensitized responding was assessed.

RESULTS

NPA produced one-trial behavioral sensitization at all ages tested. In preweanling rats, SCH23390, regardless of dose, was ineffective at preventing the induction of cocaine-, METH-, or NPA-induced one-trial behavioral sensitization.

CONCLUSIONS

The present results are in partial contrast to adult rodent studies, in which SCH23390 blocks the induction of METH- and apomorphine-induced behavioral sensitization, but not cocaine sensitization. When these findings are considered together, it appears that D1 receptor stimulation is not necessary for the induction of behavioral sensitization during the preweanling period, although D1 receptors may play a more important role in adulthood.

Discrete neurochemical coding of distinguishable motivational processes: insights from nucleus accumbens control of feeding

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

The idea that nucleus accumbens (Acb) dopamine transmission contributes to the neural mediation of reward, at least in a general sense, has achieved wide acceptance. Nevertheless, debate remains over the precise nature of dopamine's role in reward and even over the nature of reward itself. In the present article, evidence is reviewed from studies of food intake, feeding microstructure, instrumental responding for food reinforcement, and dopamine efflux associated with feeding, which suggests that reward processing in the Acb is best understood as an interaction among distinct processes coded by discrete neurotransmitter systems.

RESULTS

In agreement with several theories of Acb dopamine function, it is proposed here that allocation of motor effort in seeking food or food-associated conditioned stimuli can be dissociated from computations relevant to the hedonic evaluation of food during the consummatory act. The former appears to depend upon Acb dopamine transmission and the latter upon striatal opioid peptide release. Moreover, dopamine transmission may play a role in 'stamping in' associations between motor acts and goal attainment and perhaps also neural representations corresponding to rewarding outcomes. Finally, evidence is reviewed that amino acid transmission specifically in the Acb shell acts as a central 'circuit breaker' to flexibly enable or terminate the consummatory act, via descending connections to hypothalamic feeding control systems.

CONCLUSIONS

The heuristic framework outlined above may help explain why dopamine-compromising manipulations that strongly diminish instrumental goal-seeking behaviors leave consummatory activity relatively unaffected.

Ontogeny of ingestive behavior

Review of the ontogeny of the controls of independent ingestion reveals that some of the direct and indirect controls of meal size identified in adult rats function in the first three postnatal weeks. The controls appear sequentially and some of them change their potency after they emerge. Indirect controls exerted by metabolism and adiposity do not emerge until the fourth postnatal week or later in the postweaning period. Recent experiments in rats with monogenic obesities involving the leptin and cholecystokinin receptors have demonstrated the usefulness of independent ingestion in the detection of the earliest expression of hyperphagia. Although much remains to be learned about the normal controls of independent ingestion, it is clear that it provides relevant information about the development of normal and abnormal controls of meal size in rodents that is useful for translational research into the controls of meal size in normal and obese children.

What is the role of dopamine in reward: hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience?

What roles do mesolimbic and neostriatal dopamine systems play in reward? Do they mediate the hedonic impact of rewarding stimuli? Do they mediate hedonic reward learning and associative prediction? Our review of the literature, together with results of a new study of residual reward capacity after dopamine depletion, indicates the answer to both questions is 'no'. Rather, dopamine systems may mediate the incentive salience of rewards, modulating their motivational value in a manner separable from hedonia and reward learning. In a study of the consequences of dopamine loss, rats were depleted of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens and neostriatum by up to 99% using 6-hydroxydopamine. In a series of experiments, we applied the 'taste reactivity' measure of affective reactions (gapes, etc.) to assess the capacity of dopamine-depleted rats for: 1) normal affect (hedonic and aversive reactions), 2) modulation of hedonic affect by associative learning (taste aversion conditioning), and 3) hedonic enhancement of affect by non-dopaminergic pharmacological manipulation of palatability (benzodiazepine administration). We found normal hedonic reaction patterns to sucrose vs. quinine, normal learning of new hedonic stimulus values (a change in palatability based on predictive relations), and normal pharmacological hedonic enhancement of palatability. We discuss these results in the context of hypotheses and data concerning the role of dopamine in reward. We review neurochemical, electrophysiological, and other behavioral evidence. We conclude that dopamine systems are not needed either to mediate the hedonic pleasure of reinforcers or to mediate predictive associations involved in hedonic reward learning. We conclude instead that dopamine may be more important to incentive salience attributions to the neural representations of reward-related stimuli. Incentive salience, we suggest, is a distinct component of motivation and reward. In other words, dopamine systems are necessary for 'wanting' incentives, but not for 'liking' them or for learning new 'likes' and 'dislikes'.

Evidence that oral and nutrient reinforcers differentially condition appetitive and consummatory responses to flavors

Rats tend to increase their intake of a flavor that has previously been paired with either sweet taste or with caloric repletion. However, it is unclear whether such a change in intake is caused by changes in appetitive behaviors such as orienting and approach, or changes in consummatory behaviors and oral responsiveness. Also, it is unclear whether oral reinforcers (sweetness) and postingestive reinforcers (nutrients) lead to the same kinds of behavioral change. In the current experiments, weanling rats with oral and gastric cannulas repeatedly experienced a flavor paired with either sweetness, high caloric density, or neither. Rats were then tested for differences in appetitive olfactory orienting and consummatory oral responsiveness elicited by the flavor. Results suggest that oral reinforcement (sweetness) produces conditioning of appetitive responding to the flavor, while postingestive reinforcement produces conditioning of consummatory responding. A second experiment indicates that these behavioral changes are specific increases in responsiveness conditioned by flavor + unconditioned stimulus (US) pairing, and are unlikely to be nonspecific effects of daily unconditioned stimulus exposure.

Naloxone decreases intake of 10% sucrose in preweanling rats

To investigate the role of opioids in the mediation of sucrose intake in the preweanling rat pup, we measured the effect of naloxone on intake of pups licking 10% sucrose from the floor of a beaker (independent ingestion test) and of pups ingesting 10% sucrose that was continuously infused through an anterior, sublingual oral catheter (oral catheter test). Pups were tested only once to eliminate the possible effect of test experience. Pups were tested in the second postnatal week (PN7, 9, 10, 11, and 14 days) with naloxone (1 mg/kg) or vehicle controls. Fourteen-day-old pups were also tested with 0.1 and 0.5 mg/kg. Naloxone began to be efficacious for inhibiting intake on PN10 in the oral catheter test and on PN11 in the independent ingestion test. On PN14, the inhibition of intake was dose related and naloxone was more potent for inhibiting intake in independent ingestion tests than in oral catheter tests. Naloxone not only decreased intake, it also decreased the incidence of licking, increased mouthing and resting, and had no significant effect on locomotion. The site of the inhibitory effect of naloxone on intake was in the central nervous system, presumably in the brain, because naloxonemethiodide, an analogue of naloxone that does not cross the blood-brain barrier, did not inhibit sucrose in either test. These results demonstrate that the intake of 10% sucrose depends on endogenous opioids as early as PN10 and that this opioid mechanism operates when pups have not had prior test experience and in a test (oral catheter test) where intake is not dependent on appetitive behaviors.

Food reward: brain substrates of wanting and liking

What are the neural substrates of food reward? Are reward and pleasure identical? Can taste pleasure be assessed in animals? Is reward necessarily conscious? These questions have re-emerged in recent years, and there is now sufficient evidence to prompt re-examination of many preconceptions concerning reward and its relation to brain systems. This paper reviews evidence from many sources regarding both the psychological structure of food reward and the neural systems that mediate it. Special attention is paid to recent evidence from "tasty reactivity" studies of affective reactions to food. I argue that this evidence suggests the following surprising possibilities regarding the functional components and brain substrates of food reward. (1) Reward contains distinguishable psychological or functional components--"liking" (pleasure/palatability) and "wanting" (appetite/incentive motivation). These can be manipulated and measured separately. (2) Liking and wanting have separable neural substrates. Mediation of liking related to food reward involves neurotransmitter systems such as opioid and GABA/benzodiazepine systems, and anatomical structures such as ventral pallidum and brainstem primary gustatory relays. Mediation of wanting related to food reward involves mesotelencephalic dopamine systems, and divisions of nucleus accumbens and amygdala. Both liking and wanting arise from vastly distributed neural systems, but the two systems are separable. (3) Neural processing of food reward is not confined to the limbic forebrain. Aspects of food reward begin to be processed in the brainstem. A neural manipulation can enhance reward or produce aversion but no single lesion or transection is likely abolish all properties of food reward. (4) Both wanting and liking can exist without subjective awareness. Conscious experience can distort or blur the underlying reward process that gave rise to it. Subjective reports may contain false assessments of underlying processes, or even fail at all to register important reward processes. The core processes of liking and wanting that constitute reward are distinct from the subjective report or conscious awareness of those processes.

Effects of the dopamine D1 receptor antagonist SCH 39166 on the ingestive behaviour of alcohol-preferring rats

The present study evaluated the effect of the selective and long-acting dopamine D1 receptor antagonist SCH 39166 on several aspects of the ingestive behaviour of genetically selected alcohol-preferring rats, bred from Sardinian alcohol-preferring rats. The effect of subchronic (8 days) subcutaneous drug administration was evaluated on the simultaneous daily intake of 10% ethanol, food and water. SCH 39166, 0.1 mg/kg, did not significantly modify the intake of the three ingesta. The dose of 1 mg/kg differentially modified rat ingestive behaviour, inhibiting intake of 10% ethanol, without modifying total fluid and food intake. The higher dose of 5 mg/kg produced a non-selective suppression of ingestive behaviour, which was accompanied by behavioural impairment. Acute drug injection was tested on 2-h intake of 10% sucrose, 0.1% saccharin, water or food. The doses of 0.1 and 1 mg/kg markedly inhibited the 2-h intake of 10% sucrose and 0.1% saccharin, but they did not modify either the 2-h water intake in water deprived and water sated rats or the 2-h food intake in food deprived rats. These findings suggest an important role of mechanisms mediated by D1 receptors in the control of alcohol and sweet solution intake, but not in water and food intake. Moreover, they indicate that SCH 39166, in relation to its selectivity and long-lasting activity, is an interesting pharmacological tool to investigate further the role of D1 receptor mechanisms in the control of ingestive behaviour.

Pavlov and appetite

Before working on conditioned reflexes, Pavlov completed a research program designed to investigate the physiological controls of salivary, gastric, and pancreatic secretions. The originality and significance of this work resulted in a Nobel Prize in 1904, the first awarded to a physiologist. The first part of this manuscript focuses on the experimental analysis of the controls of gastric secretion. This demonstrates Pavlov's experimental skill and his ability to draw strong inferences about how a psychic factor like appetite grew into a physiological effect, such as gastric secretion. The second part of the manuscript reviews Pavlov's ideas about the central neural mechanism for appetite and its stimulatory effect on gastric secretion, and demonstrates that Pavlov's "conceptual nervous system" is very similar to our own.

Naltrexone, dopamine receptor agonists and antagonists, and food intake in rats: 2. 2-deoxy-D-glucose

Significantly greater inhibition of deprivation-induced food intake occurs following cotreatment with naltrexone and either the D1 antagonist, SCH-23390, the D2 agonist, quinpirole, or the D2 antagonist, haloperidol, relative to naltrexone alone. Cotreatment with the D1 agonist, SKF-38393, failed to alter naltrexone's inhibition of deprivation-induced intake. The present study evaluated whether each of these D1 and D2 agonists and antagonists altered hyperphagia following 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2DG) themselves or in combination with naltrexone. Neither SKF-38393 (1-10 mg/kg) nor SCH-23390 (25-200 micrograms/kg) altered 2DG hyperphagia. Quinpirole (0.025-0.5 mg/kg) dose dependently decreased 2DG hyperphagia. 2DG hyperphagia was respectively increased and decreased by low (50 micrograms/kg) and high (500 micrograms/kg) doses of haloperidol. Cotreatment of SKF-38393 (0.1-1 mg/kg) and naltrexone potently enhanced the inhibition of 2DG hyperphagia relative to naltrexone alone. In contrast, cotreatment of naltrexone and either SCH-23390 (100-200 micrograms/kg) or quinpirole (0.025-0.05 mg/kg) inhibited 2DG hyperphagia in a manner similar to that of naltrexone alone. Finally, cotreatment of haloperidol (5-50 micrograms/kg) and naltrexone transiently enhanced the inhibition of 2DG hyperphagia relative to naltrexone alone.

Naltrexone, dopamine receptor agonists and antagonists, and food intake in rats: 1. Food deprivation

Different forms of food intake are reduced by both agonists and antagonists of dopamine D1 and D2 receptors as well as general opioid antagonists. The present study evaluated whether deprivation (24 h)-induced food intake was altered following systemic administration of either the D1 agonist, SKF-38393, the D1 antagonist, SCH-23390, the D2 agonist, quinpirole, or the D2 antagonist, haloperidol, alone or in combination with the general opioid antagonist, naltrexone. Both SKF-38393 (5-10 mg/kg) and SCH-23390 (100-200 micrograms/kg) significantly and dose dependently reduced deprivation-induced intake. Whereas quinpirole (0.5-1 mg/kg) failed to alter deprivation-induced intake, haloperidol increased deprivation-induced intake at low (50 micrograms) doses and decreased intake at higher (100-500 micrograms/kg) doses. Naltrexone (2.5-10 mg/kg) significantly inhibited deprivation-induced intake. When naltrexone was paired with behaviorally ineffective doses of either SCH-23390 (2.5-100 micrograms/kg), quinpirole (0.01-1 mg/kg), or haloperidol (50 micrograms/kg), the degree of reduction of deprivation-induced intake was significantly greater than that produced by naltrexone alone. Pairing naltrexone with SKF-38393 produced reductions of deprivation-induced intake comparable to that of naltrexone alone.

SCH23390, but not raclopride, decreases intake of intraorally infused 10% sucrose in adult rats

When 10% sucrose is infused intraorally on postnatal days (PN) 7, 14, and 21, raclopride, a D2 dopaminergic antagonist, does not affect intake at any age and SCH23390, a D1 antagonist, does not affect intake on PN 7 but a large dose decreases intake on PN 14 and 21. To determine if this differential effect of the antagonists on PN 14 and 21 remains after further postnatal development, we studied adult rats in this intraoral intake test. Female (n = 77) and male (n = 81) adult rats, approximately 43 or 96 days old, were deprived for 4 h before intraoral infusion of 10% sucrose. Each rat was tested once and this was its first experience with sucrose. SCH23390 (133 or 267 micrograms/kg), raclopride (357 or 714 micrograms/kg), or saline vehicle was given IP at -15 min. The larger dose of SCH23390 significantly decreased intake of rats that were approximately 43 and 96 days old, but neither dose of raclopride changed intake at either age. These results suggest that D1, but not D2, receptors are necessary components of the central neural network that processes the unconditioned gustatory stimulus of 10% sucrose into mouthing and swallowing movements that maintain ingestion in late preweanling and adult rats under these conditions.

Raclopride decreases sucrose intake of rat pups in independent ingestion tests

To investigate the role of dopaminergic activity at D2 receptors in the mediation of the positive reinforcing effect of sucrose on ingestion in preweanling rats, we tested the effects of the D2 antagonist, raclopride, on the intake of 10% sucrose of rats on postnatal days (PN) 7, 14, and 21. Intake was measured during independent ingestion tests in which pups licked sucrose from the floor of a beaker and during oral catheter tests in which sucrose was continuously infused through an anterior, sublingual, oral catheter. Rats were tested once to eliminate the possibility that repeated test experience would affect the response to raclopride. Pretreatment with raclopride resulted in decreased intake in independent ingestion (II) tests, but not in oral catheter (OC) tests on PN 7, 14, and 21. The inhibition of intake was not due to a generalized motor deficit because raclopride did not affect latency to eat, time-sampled activity scores, or latency to withdraw the hindlimb from a raised position. These results demonstrate that dopaminergic activity at D2 receptors is necessary for the positive reinforcing effect of sucrose that maintains ingestion in the II test but not in the OC test.