Dopamine agonist therapy and deep brain stimulation (DBS) are both linked to increased impulsivity in Parkinson’s disease (PD), but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. We trained intact and PD-like rats on a rat gambling task (rGT) measuring impulsive choice and
premature responding. Animals were then retested with/without treatment, pramipexole (PPX) or DBS, administered chronically prior to rGT testing. Early PD-like rats did not exhibit major differences in rGT performance or treatment response. Our work suggests that DBS and PPX are not intrinsically linked with increases in impulsivity. Neither DBS nor PPX disrupted gambling-like behaviour in our paradigm, while differential effects on premature and perseverant responding in the task were observed with treatment. Based on our findings, the previously reported ability of PPX to increase impulsive choice might not be mediated by the dopamine D3 receptor. Interestingly, our work suggests that the effects of STN-DBS on impulse control might be amplitude-dependent.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/42665 |
| Date | 20 November 2013 |
| Creators | Aleksandrova, Lily R |
| Contributors | Nobrega, José |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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