Nicotine is more addictive, not more cognitively therapeutic in a neurodevelopmental model of schizophrenia produced by neonatal ventral hippocampal lesions.

Nicotine dependence is the leading cause of death in the United States. However, research on high rates of nicotine use in mental illness has primarily explained this co-morbidity as reflecting nicotine's therapeutic benefits, especially for cognitive symptoms, equating smoking with 'self-medication'. We used a leading neurodevelopmental model of mental illness in rats to prospectively test the alternative possibility that nicotine dependence pervades mental illness because nicotine is simply more addictive in mentally ill brains that involve developmental hippocampal dysfunction. Neonatal ventral hippocampal lesions (NVHL) have previously been demonstrated to produce post-adolescent-onset, pharmacological, neurobiological and cognitive-deficit features of schizophrenia. Here, we show that NVHLs increase adult nicotine self-administration, potentiating acquisition-intake, total nicotine consumed and drug seeking. Behavioral sensitization to nicotine in adolescence prior to self-administration is not accentuated by NVHLs in contrast to increased nicotine self-administration and behavioral sensitization documented in adult NVHL rats, suggesting periadolescent neurodevelopmental onset of nicotine addiction vulnerability in the NVHL model. Delivering a nicotine regimen approximating the exposure used in the sensitization and self-administration experiments (i.e. as a treatment) to adult rats did not specifically reverse NVHL-induced cortical-hippocampal-dependent cognitive deficits and actually worsened cognitive efficiency after nicotine treatment stopped, generating deficits that resemble those due to NVHLs. These findings represent the first prospective evidence demonstrating a causal link between disease processes in schizophrenia and nicotine addiction. Developmental cortical-temporal limbic dysfunction in mental illness may thus amplify nicotine's reinforcing effects and addiction risk and severity, even while producing cognitive deficits that are not specifically or substantially reversible with nicotine.

Accentuated behavioral sensitization to nicotine in the neonatal ventral hippocampal lesion model of schizophrenia.

The prevalence of smoking in schizophrenia patients far exceeds that in the general population. Increased vulnerability to nicotine and other drug addictions in schizophrenia may reflect the impact of developmental limbic abnormalities on cortical-striatal mediation of behavioral changes associated with drug use. Rats with neonatal ventral hippocampal lesions (NVHLs), a neurodevelopmental model of schizophrenia, have previously been shown to exhibit altered patterns of behavioral sensitization to both cocaine and ethanol. This study explored nicotine sensitization in NVHLs by testing locomotor activity of NVHL vs. SHAM-operated controls over 3 weeks in response to nicotine (0.5 mg/kg) or saline injections (s.c.) followed by a nicotine challenge delivered to all rats 2 weeks later. At the beginning of the initial injection series, post-injection locomotor activation was indistinguishable among all treatment groups. However, nicotine but not saline injections produced a progressive sensitization effect that was greater in NVHLs compared to SHAMs. In the challenge session, rats with previous nicotine history showed enhanced locomotor activation to nicotine when compared to drug naïve rats, with NVHL-nicotine rats showing the greatest degree of activity overall. These results demonstrate that NVHLs exhibit altered short- and long-term sensitization profiles to nicotine, similar to altered long-term sensitization profiles produced by cocaine and ethanol. Collectively, these findings suggest the neurodevelopmental underpinnings of schizophrenia produce enhanced behavioral sensitization to addictive drugs as an involuntary and progressive neurobehavioral process, independent of the acute psychoactive properties uniquely attributed to nicotine, cocaine, or alcohol.

Nicotine effects in adolescence and adulthood on cognition and α4ß2-nicotinic receptors in the neonatal ventral hippocampal lesion rat model of schizophrenia.

RATIONAL: Nicotine use in schizophrenia has traditionally been explained as "self-medication" of cognitive and/or nicotinic acetylcholinergic receptor (nAChR) abnormalities. OBJECTIVES: We test this hypothesis in a neurodevelopmental rat model of schizophrenia that shows increased addiction behaviors including enhanced nicotine reinforcement and drug-seeking. METHODS: Nicotine transdermal patch (5 mg/kg/day vs. placebo × 10 days in adolescence or adulthood) effects on subsequent radial-arm maze learning (15 sessions) and frontal-cortical-striatal nAChR densities (α4ß2; [3H]-epibatidine binding) were examined in neonatal ventral hippocampal lesion (NVHL) and SHAM-operated rats. RESULTS: NVHL cognitive deficits were not differentially affected by nicotine history compared to SHAMs. Nicotine history produced minimal cognitive effects while increasing food-reward consumption on the maze, compounding with NVHL-induced overconsumption. Acute nicotine (0.5 mg/kg) delivered before the final maze sessions produced modest improvements in maze performance in rats with nicotine patch histories only, but not differentially so in NVHLs. Consistent with in vivo neuroimaging of ß2 nAChR binding in schizophrenia smokers vs. non-smokers and healthy controls, adult NVHLs showed 12% reductions in nAChR binding in MPFC (p < 0.05) but not ventral striatum (<5% changes, p > .40), whereas nicotine history elevated nAChRs across both regions (>30%, p < 0.001) without interacting with NVHLs. Adolescent vs. adult nicotine exposure did not alter nAChRs differentially. CONCLUSIONS: Although replicating nicotine-induced upregulation of nAChRs in human smokers and demonstrating NVHL validity in terms of schizophrenia-associated nAChR density patterns, these findings do not support hypotheses explaining increased nicotine use in schizophrenia as reflecting illness-specific effects of nicotine to therapeutically alter cognition or nAChR densities.

Nicotine exposure during adolescence enhances behavioral sensitivity to nicotine during adulthood in Wistar rats.

RATIONALE: Drug use during adolescence is associated with an increased propensity for drug dependency during adulthood. Therefore, the effects of adolescent exposure to nicotine on adult behavioral responsiveness to nicotine are of particular importance. OBJECTIVES: The objective of the current study was to determine if adolescent nicotine exposure would enhance behavioral sensitivity and development of sensitization to nicotine during adulthood. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Male Wistar rats were assigned to one of three groups that received subcutaneous (s.c.) injections of nicotine (0, 0.25, or 0.5mg/kg) in the home cage for 12 consecutive days during adolescence, PD 31-42. Starting on PD 80, distance traveled, rearing, and stereotypy were recorded in locomotor activity chambers each day for 10 days, following s.c. injections of 0, 0.25, or 0.5mg/kg nicotine. One week later, a final challenge session took place during which rats were injected with 0.5mg/kg nicotine. RESULTS: Rats exposed to nicotine during adolescence displayed a greater locomotor response to a novel environment than saline-treated rats. Adolescent nicotine treatment also resulted in context-independent sensitization to the acute locomotor activating properties of nicotine, including distance traveled and stereotypy, as measured on the first day of adulthood nicotine exposure. Adolescent nicotine-treated rats displayed increased sensitivity to repeated nicotine exposures during adulthood, compared to adolescent saline-treated rats, as measured by distance traveled, rearing, and stereotypic behaviors. Finally, rats treated with nicotine only during adolescence were more sensitive to a final nicotine challenge during adulthood than rats treated with nicotine only previously during adulthood. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the results suggest that adolescent nicotine treatment predisposes adult rats to develop increased behavioral sensitivity to chronic nicotine treatment and to be more sensitive to the initial effects of nicotine.

Interoceptive Pavlovian conditioning with nicotine as the conditional stimulus varies as a function of the number of conditioning trials and unpaired sucrose deliveries.

In rats, the pharmacological (interoceptive) effects of nicotine can serve as a signal (conditional stimulus) in a Pavlovian (classical) conditioning task. In this task, nicotine administration (0.4 mg base/kg, subcutaneous) is typically paired with intermittent access to a liquid sucrose unconditional stimulus; sucrose is withheld on saline sessions. An increase in sucrose receptacle entries (goal tracking) on nicotine sessions indicates conditioning. Given our limited understanding of the functional relationships controlling conditioned responding to a nicotine conditional stimulus, the present research examined nicotine's sensitivity to several manipulations shown to affect the conditioned responding in more widely studied Pavlovian conditioning tasks that use exteroceptive conditional stimuli: number of nicotine conditional stimulus-sucrose unconditional stimulus pairings per session (0, 3, 9, 18, or 36) and the impact of sucrose deliveries in saline sessions. Differential goal tracking developed in fewer sessions and asymptotic conditioned responding magnitude was greater with more nicotine-sucrose pairings. Further, goal tracking was more resistant to extinction (unconditional stimulus withheld) with more conditional-unconditional stimulus pairings during the acquisition phase. The discrimination was not acquired when sucrose presentations (9 or 18) also occurred during saline sessions. Furthermore, expression of the discrimination was disrupted when sucrose was presented in saline sessions; this disruption resulted from goal tracking in saline sessions. These results are consistent with the notion that nicotine-evoked goal tracking results from interoceptive conditioning processes.