The influence of long-access cocaine self-administration on behavioral measures of anxiety and craving in rats

Cocaine addiction is a prevalent and substantial problem. It is very difficult for cocaine-addicted individuals to receive treatment, avoid relapse, and go into full remission. Animal models of cocaine taking can be used to study different facets of this disease. One such model is cocaine self-administration. Although self-administration is a widely used model in the field of drug-addiction biology (Müller Ewald V., Lalumiere R., 2017), its influence on rat-specific characteristics such as anxiety and craving is not clear. In this experiment, we sought to correlate drug-taking levels during self-administration with measures of anxiety-like behaviors and cocaine craving. Male Sprague-Dawley rats (n=21) were implanted with intrajugular catheters and underwent cocaine self-administration. Rats then underwent two tests, before and after withdrawal, to serve as a measure of cocaine craving. Our results suggest that levels of cocaine taking during cocaine self-administration does not appear to impact levels of cocaine craving during periods of withdrawal or levels of anxiety-like behaviors of rats during experimental studies. Overall, this strengthens the self-administration model and its ability to study the neurobiology of addiction.