TY - JOUR
T1 - Pentobarbital facilitated extinction
T2 - Effects of different schedules of drug withdrawal
AU - Griffiths, Roland R.
AU - Thompson, Travis
N1 - Funding Information:
PREVIOUS research \[2\] suggests that the extinction procedure of behavior elimination can be facilitated by combining it with pentobarbital treatment. Rats were trained to emit a bar-press response on a fixed-ratio schedule and subsequently extinguished. During extinction, a gradual decreasing dose regimen was employed in which high doses of pentobarbital were administered on the first extinction session and progressively reduced over successive sessions. Responding by pentobarbital-treated animals differed from that of saline-treated animals in two ways: (1) Total extinction responding: the pentobarbital groups had significantly fewer cumulative responses in extinction than saline groups, and (2) The pattern of responding in extinction: the pattern for saline-treated animals was characterized by substantial responding on the first session with progres- sively fewer responses over succeeding sessions; whereas pentobarbital-treated animals had little responding during the first extinction session and response bursting during both early and later sessions. The rationale behind this previous research was that extinction could be facilitated by initially giving immobilizing doses of drug, and then gradually reducing the drug dose over successive sessions. Although initial extinction responding could be decreased by administering high doses of drug on early extinction sessions, the goal was to develop a procedure to reduce the over-all extinction responding. Since research suggests that behavior learned under the interoceptive stimulus conditions of the drug state will not necessarily generalize to those of a nondrug state \[3,4\], a fading procedure was employed with the expectation that it ~This research was conducted during the tenure of USPHS Pre-doctoral Training Grant MH-08565 at the University of Minnesota and was supported in part by research grant MH-15349. Reprints may be obtained from R. Griffiths, Department of Psychiatry, Traylor 623, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205.
PY - 1974
Y1 - 1974
N2 - Bar pressing by rats was trained on a fixed-ratio food reinforcement schedule and subsequently extinguished under different schedules of drug withdrawal. Reduced total extinction responding was obtained with 20-25 sessions of 15 min duration or 3 sessions of 5 hr duration. Both the gradual discontinuation dose schedule (fading) and the abrupt discontinuation dose schedule were equally effective in reducing extinction responding. However, the absolute number of sessions of drug treatment by the graded dose schedule or the abrupt discontinuation schedule had no effect on total responding. Although there was no difference on total extinction responding under the 2 dose schedules, the pattern of extinction responding was markedly different. The graded dose procedure produced little or no responding on the first extinction session with intermittent response bursting thereafter. However, the abrupt discontinuation procedure produced complete response suppression during initial drug sessions followed by substantial responding on the first saline session with progressively fewer responses over the next few sessions. Except for the initial response suppression, the pattern of extinction responding for the abrupt discontinuation procedure was identical to that observed when saline alone was administered in extinction.
AB - Bar pressing by rats was trained on a fixed-ratio food reinforcement schedule and subsequently extinguished under different schedules of drug withdrawal. Reduced total extinction responding was obtained with 20-25 sessions of 15 min duration or 3 sessions of 5 hr duration. Both the gradual discontinuation dose schedule (fading) and the abrupt discontinuation dose schedule were equally effective in reducing extinction responding. However, the absolute number of sessions of drug treatment by the graded dose schedule or the abrupt discontinuation schedule had no effect on total responding. Although there was no difference on total extinction responding under the 2 dose schedules, the pattern of extinction responding was markedly different. The graded dose procedure produced little or no responding on the first extinction session with intermittent response bursting thereafter. However, the abrupt discontinuation procedure produced complete response suppression during initial drug sessions followed by substantial responding on the first saline session with progressively fewer responses over the next few sessions. Except for the initial response suppression, the pattern of extinction responding for the abrupt discontinuation procedure was identical to that observed when saline alone was administered in extinction.
KW - Extinction
KW - Fading
KW - Pentobarbital
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U2 - 10.1016/0091-3057(74)90077-X
DO - 10.1016/0091-3057(74)90077-X
M3 - Article
C2 - 4858098
AN - SCOPUS:0016137244
SN - 0091-3057
VL - 2
SP - 331
EP - 338
JO - Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior
JF - Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior
IS - 3
ER -