ArticlesThe Role of Accumbens Dopamine in Lever Pressing and Response Allocation: Effects of 6-OHDA Injected into Core and Dorsomedial Shell
Section snippets
Subjects
A total of 90 male Sprague–Dawley rats (Harlan Sprague–Dawley, Indianapolis, IN) were used in these experiments. Rats were housed in a colony maintained at 23°C with a 12 L: 12 D cycle (lights on at 0700 h). Rats were initially food deprived to 85% of their free-feeding body weight, but then allowed a modest growth (up to 95% of original weight) over the course of the experiment. Water was available ad lib in the home cages.
Behavioral Procedures
Tests of lever pressing and chow consumption were conducted in operant
Neurochemical Results
As shown in Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, rats receiving injections of 6-OHDA in either the nucleus accumbens core or shell (see Fig. 1) had significant depletions of DA in both regions, as demonstrated by ANOVA. For the analysis of nucleus accumbens core DA, ANOVA revealed an overall significant effect of the 6-OHDA treatment in all three experiments [Table 1, F(2, 24) = 88.67, p < 0.001; Table 2, F(2, 21) = 26.91, p < 0.001; Table 3, F(2, 22) = 23.99, p < 0.001]. For all three experiments,
Discussion
In these experiments it was observed that the behavioral effects of injections of 6-OHDA into the nucleus accumbens can vary greatly, depending upon the site of injection and the behavioral task employed. There were no significant effects of core or shell 6-OHDA injections on VI30 responding. Following core injections of 6-OHDA, lever pressing on the FR5 schedule was significantly decreased, and the distribution of IRTs was substantially altered. On the concurrent FR5/chow feeding task, core
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Many thanks to Juliet Aberman for her helpful comments.
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