Prior cocaine self-administration impairs attention signals in anterior cingulate cortex

Daniela Vázquez,Amanda C Burton,Matthew R Roesch,Stephen S Tennyson,Heather J Pribut

doi:10.1038/s41386-019-0578-2

Abstract

Although maladaptive decision-making is a defining feature of drug abuse and addiction, we have yet to ascertain how cocaine self-administration disrupts neural signals in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain region thought to contribute to attentional control. To address this issue, rats were trained on a reward-guided decision-making task; reward value was manipulated by independently varying the size of or the delay to reward over several trial blocks. Subsequently, rats self-administered either a cocaine (experimental group) or sucrose (control) during 12 consecutive days, after which they underwent a 1-month withdrawal period. Upon completion of this period, rats performed the previously learned reward-guided decision-making task while we recorded from single neurons in ACC. We demonstrate that prior cocaine self-administration attenuates attention and attention-related ACC signals in an intake-dependent manner, and that changes in attention are decoupled from ACC firing. These effects likely contribute to the impaired decision-making—typified by chronic substance abuse and relapse—observed after drug use.

Highlights

Difficulties in treating addiction arise from vulnerability toward cue-induced cravings that lead to relapse and reinstatement of drug-seeking behavior [1,2,3,4]
We explored whether shifts in behavior and associated neural correlates in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were impacted by prior cocaine use
In summary, we show that neural signals related to attentional control in ACC are attenuated following cocaine exposure, and that neural firing and behavioral changes were correlated with the degree to which rats self-administered cocaine

Summary

Introduction

Difficulties in treating addiction arise from vulnerability toward cue-induced cravings that lead to relapse and reinstatement of drug-seeking behavior [1,2,3,4]. The ACC contributes to behavioral adjustments that are triggered by the occurrence of unexpected events, and plays a key role in shifting the allocation of attentional resources toward behaviorally relevant stimuli when there are violations in outcome expectancies, uncertainty, or conflict between competing stimuli or behaviors [7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16,17,18,19] In line with these theories, we previously reported that ACC firing correlates with Pearce and Hall-like changes in attention that occur during learning [16, 22]. We explored whether shifts in behavior and associated neural correlates in the ACC were impacted by prior cocaine use

Methods

Results

Conclusion