title: d-Amphetamine stimulates unconditioned exploration/approach behaviors in crayfish: towards a conserved evolutionary function of ancestral drug reward.
abstract: In mammals, rewarding properties of drugs depend on their capacity to activate a dopamine-mediated appetitive motivational seeking state--a system that allows animals to pursue and find all kinds of objects and events needed for survival. With such states strongly conserved in evolution, invertebrates have recently been developed into a powerful model in addiction research, where a shared ancestral brain system for the acquisition of reward can mediate drug addiction in many species. A conditioned place preference paradigm has illustrated that crayfish seek out environments that had previously been paired with psychostimulant and opioid administration. The present work demonstrates that the administration of D-amphetamine stimulates active explorative behaviors in crayfish through the action of the drug within their head ganglion. Crayfish, with a modularly organized and experimentally accessible, ganglionic nervous system offers a unique model to investigate (1) the fundamental, biological mechanisms of addictive drug reward; (2) how an appetitive/seeking disposition is implemented in a simple neural system, and (3) how it mediates the rewarding actions of major drugs of abuse.
authors.affiliation: Santa Lucia Foundation, European Centre for Brain Research (CERC), Via del Fosso di Fiorano 65, 00143 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Alcaro
authors.forename: Jaak
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Panksepp
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Huber
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003400:Astacoidea / Q000502:physiology*; D016739:Behavior, Addictive / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D005075:Biological Evolution; D003913:Dextroamphetamine / Q000494:pharmacology*; D005106:Exploratory Behavior / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D009042:Motivation / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D012201:Reward
chemical_list: D003913:Dextroamphetamine