It is widely believed that nicotine is the main reason for acquiring and maintaining tobacco addiction. However, animal studies suggest that nicotine is only a weak reinforcer compared to other drugs of abuse. For example, nicotine does not consistently produce a conditioned place preference (CPP), a standard measure of reward in rats. We attempted to examine the reason(s) for this discrepancy by manipulating several procedural variables in this paradigm. In addition, we hypothesized that partial monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibition, as observed in smokers, may potentiate the rewarding effects of nicotine in the CPP paradigm. Overall, we were not able to obtain reliable nicotine CPP and none of the procedural variables tested (e.g. speed of injection, nicotine pre-treatment) proved to play an important role in acquisition of nicotine CPP. Possible reasons for the failure of our experiments and of other nicotine CPP studies are discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.101703 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Baharnouri, Golriz. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics.) |
| Rights | © Golriz Baharnouri, 2006 |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002585937, proquestno: AAIMR32816, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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