Operant Sensation Seeking in the Mouse

Operant sensation seeking in the mouse.

Operant methods are powerful behavioral tools for the study of motivated behavior. These 'self-administration' methods have been used extensively in drug addiction research due to their high construct validity. Operant studies provide researchers a tool for preclinical investigation of several aspects of the addiction process. For example, mechanisms of acute reinforcement (both drug and non-dr...

Operant Sensation Seeking Requires Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor 5 (mGluR5)

Pharmacological and genetic studies have suggested that the metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) is critically involved in mediating the reinforcing effects of drugs of abuse, but not food. The purpose of this study was to use mGluR5 knockout (KO), heterozygous (Het), and wildtype (WT) mice to determine if mGluR5 modulates operant sensation seeking (OSS), an operant task that uses varied ...

Cannabinoid Receptor 1 and Fatty Acid Amide Hydrolase Contribute to Operant Sensation Seeking in Mice

A large body of evidence in humans and preclinical models supports a role for the endocannabinoid system in the proper execution of motivated or goal-directed behaviors. Operant sensation seeking (OSS) is a task that uses varied sensory stimuli as a reinforcer to maintain operant responding in mice. The purpose of the studies in this report was to begin to explore the role of endocannabinoid si...

Sensation seeking in adolescents

Sensation seeking and the aversive motivational system.

Sensation seeking (SS) has traditionally been viewed as a phenomenon of the appetitive motivational system. The limited SS research exploring contributions from the aversive motivational system reveals greater anxious reactivity to dangerous activities among low sensation seekers. The present study extends this line of work by comparing levels of fear and anxiety during anticipation of predicta...