Self-administration

Self-administration
MeSHD012646

Self-administration is, in its medical sense, the process of a subject administering a pharmacological substance to themself. A clinical example of this is the subcutaneous "self-injection" of insulin by a diabetic patient.

In animal experimentation, self-administration is a form of operant conditioning where the reward is a drug. This drug can be administered remotely through an implanted intravenous line or an intracerebroventricular injection. Self-administration of putatively addictive drugs is considered one of the most valid experimental models to investigate drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior. The higher the frequency with which a test animal emits the operant behavior, the more rewarding (and addictive), the test substance is considered. Self-administration of addictive drugs has been studied using humans,[1] non-human primates,[2] mice,[3] invertebrates such as ants, and, most commonly, rats.

Self-administration of heroin and cocaine is used to screen drugs for possible effects in reducing drug-taking behavior, especially reinstatement of drug-seeking after extinction. Drugs with this effect may be useful for treating people with drug addiction by helping them establish abstinence or reducing their probability of relapsing to substance use after a period of abstinence.

In a prominent model of self-administration developed by George Koob, rats are allowed to self-administer cocaine for either 1 hour each day (short access) or 6 hours each day (long access). Those animals who are allowed to self-administer for 6 hours a day show behavior that is thought to resemble cocaine dependence, such as an escalation of the total dose taken during each session and an increase in the dose taken when cocaine is first made available.[4]

  1. ^ Higgins, Stephen; Warren K. Bickel; John R. Hughes (1994). "Influence of an alternative reinforcer on human cocaine self-administration". Life Sciences. 55 (3): 179–187. doi:10.1016/0024-3205(94)00878-7. PMID 8007760.
  2. ^ Beveridge, Thomas; Hilary R. Smith; James B. Daunais; Michael A. Nader; Linda J. Porrino (9 Jun 2006). "Chronic cocaine self-administration is associated with altered functional activity in the temporal lobes of non human primates". European Journal of Neuroscience. 23 (11): 3109–3118. doi:10.1111/j.1460-9568.2006.04788.x. PMID 16820001. S2CID 20422139.[dead link‍]
  3. ^ Pomrenze M; Baratta V. M; Cadle B.; Cooper D.C. (2012). "Cocaine self-administration in the mouse: A low- cost, chronic catheter preparation" (PDF). Nature Precedings. doi:10.1038/npre.2012.7040.1.
  4. ^ Koob, George F.; LeMoal, Michel (2005). Neurobiology of Addiction. Academic Press. ISBN 978-0-12-419239-3.[page needed]