Paradoxical effects of the endocannabinoid uptake inhibitor VDM11 on accumbal neural encoding of reward predictive cues.
A growing body of evidence implicates the endocannabinoid (eCB) system in brain reward function. Previous studies show that antagonizing eCB transmission decreases reward-directed behavior and nucleus accumbens (NAc) encoding of reward predictive cues. We, therefore, hypothesized that elevating eCB levels would uniformly facilitate NAc neural encoding of reward predictive cues and reward-directed behavior. Contrary to our expectations, the eCB transport uptake inhibitor, VDM11, dose dependently decreased both measures.
Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21201, USA.
Erik B
EB
Oleson
Joseph F
JF
Cheer
D000818:Animals; D001095:Arachidonic Acids / Q000494:pharmacology*; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000187:drug effects*; D003463:Cues; D004569:Electroencephalography; D063388:Endocannabinoids / Q000378:metabolism*; D008297:Male; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000187:drug effects; D009714:Nucleus Accumbens / Q000187:drug effects / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D012201:Reward
D001095:Arachidonic Acids; D063388:Endocannabinoids; C462953:N-(2-methyl-3-hydroxyphenyl)-5,8,11,14-eicosatetraenamide