Presenter Information

Shreyya Malik, SUNY GeneseoFollow

Submission Type

Poster

Start Date

April 2020

Abstract

Cocaine addiction is a problem for millions of people, however we are still lacking an effective treatment. It is characterized by compulsive behaviour which marks difficulties in remaining abstinent, with a high risk of relapse. Here, I focus on the interaction between the post-drug environment and drug-seeking by testing one potential environmental treatment, an enriched environment (EE), to reduce risk of cocaine relapse. This study proposes to investigate neural circuits involved in environmental protection of context-induced relapse. Mice exposed to cocaine will be assessed for preference of a cocaine-associated context using the conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm. Mice will then be housed in either standard or EE cages for 2 weeks of withdrawal, before being returned to the CPP chamber for a test of context-induced relapse. I hypothesize that EE will reduce cocaine relapse, an outcome associated with the changes in activation in brain regions related to reward and addiction.

Comments

Acknowledgements: This work was funded by the Undergraduate Summer Fellowship awarded by the Office of Sponsored Research at SUNY Geneseo and was conducted under the supervision of Dr. Alison R. Bechard.

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Apr 22nd, 12:00 AM

118— Environmental Enrichment as a Treatment for Cocaine Relapse

Cocaine addiction is a problem for millions of people, however we are still lacking an effective treatment. It is characterized by compulsive behaviour which marks difficulties in remaining abstinent, with a high risk of relapse. Here, I focus on the interaction between the post-drug environment and drug-seeking by testing one potential environmental treatment, an enriched environment (EE), to reduce risk of cocaine relapse. This study proposes to investigate neural circuits involved in environmental protection of context-induced relapse. Mice exposed to cocaine will be assessed for preference of a cocaine-associated context using the conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm. Mice will then be housed in either standard or EE cages for 2 weeks of withdrawal, before being returned to the CPP chamber for a test of context-induced relapse. I hypothesize that EE will reduce cocaine relapse, an outcome associated with the changes in activation in brain regions related to reward and addiction.

 

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