Authors

Presenter(s)

Hanna Jane Peterson

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Description

Humans that become addicted to alcohol and other drugs often relapse even long after becoming abstinent especially when they encounter stressors in life. Stress that a healthy person handles with coping mechanisms like exercise or talking to a friend, an addict may handle by resuming use of their drug of choice. People may also relapse if they re-enter an environment where they used the drug because of a learned association between that environment and the good feeling of the drug. In order to understand relapse behavior, a pre-clinical rodent model of relapse is used which models the important aspects of the human addiction and relapse condition. While a rodent model does not replicate every aspect of the human condition, it can model the aspects that are most important in addiction and relapse overall. The model used in this study is the alcohol deprivation effect (ADE) model. It has been found to model alcohol addiction and relapse in rats and can therefore allow for further understanding of relapse behavior as well as allow for testing of the effects of various variables like stress or therapeutic drugs on relapse behavior. However, before these further tests can be done, it must be clear that the model works in the Long Evans rats that are used in the lab. I am also interested in whether the ADE model yields similar results in male and female rats. This project will investigate the usefulness of the ADE model in Long Evans male and female rats by replicating a similar study done previously by Sinclair and Tiihonen (1988).

Publication Date

4-18-2018

Project Designation

Honors Thesis

Primary Advisor

Tracy R. Butler

Primary Advisor's Department

Psychology

Keywords

Stander Symposium project

Alcohol Deprivation Effect: An Investigation of a Model of Alcohol Dependence and Relapse Behaviors in Male and Female Long Evans Rats

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