Pharmacological characterization of sex differences in the effects of dopaminergic drugs on effort-based decision making in rats.

RATIONALE: Motivational dysfunctions related to effort exertion are common in psychiatric disorders. Dopamine systems regulate exertion of effort and effort-based choice in humans and rodents. OBJECTIVES: Previous rodent studies mainly employed male rats, and it is imperative to conduct studies in male and female rats. METHODS: The present studies compared the effort-related effects of IP injections of the dopamine antagonists ecopipam and haloperidol, and the vesicular monoamine transport-2 inhibitor tetrabenazine (TBZ), in male and female rats using the fixed ratio 5/chow feeding choice task. RESULTS: Ecopipam (0.05-0.2 mg/kg) and haloperidol (0.05-0.15 mg/kg) induced a low-effort bias, decreasing lever pressing and increasing chow intake in males and females in the same dose range. With lever pressing, there was a modest but significant dose x sex interaction after ecopipam injection, but there was no significant interaction after administration of haloperidol. In the first study with TBZ (0.25-1.0 mg/kg), there was a robust sex difference. TBZ shifted choice from lever pressing to chow intake in male rats, but was ineffective in females. In a second experiment, 2.0 mg/kg affected choice behavior in both males and females. TBZ increased accumbens c-Fos immunoreactivity in a sex-dependent manner, with males significantly increasing at 1.0 mg/kg, while females showed augmented immunoreactivity at 2.0 mg/kg. CONCLUSIONS: The neural and behavioral effects of TBZ differed across sexes, emphasizing the importance of conducting studies in male and female rats. This research has implications for understanding the effort-related motivational dysfunctions seen in psychopathology.

Potential therapeutics for effort-related motivational dysfunction: assessing novel atypical dopamine transport inhibitors.

People with depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders can experience motivational dysfunctions such as fatigue and anergia, which involve reduced exertion of effort in goal-directed activity. To model effort-related motivational dysfunction, effort-based choice tasks can be used, in which rats can select between obtaining a preferred reinforcer by high exertion of effort vs. a low effort/less preferred option. Preclinical data indicate that dopamine transport (DAT) inhibitors can reverse pharmacologically-induced low-effort biases and increase selection of high-effort options in effort-based choice tasks. Although classical DAT blockers like cocaine can produce undesirable effects such as liability for misuse and psychotic reactions, not all DAT inhibitors have the same neurochemical profile. The current study characterized the effort-related effects of novel DAT inhibitors that are modafinil analogs and have a range of binding profiles and neurochemical actions (JJC8-088, JJC8-089, RDS3-094, and JJC8-091) by using two different effort-related choice behavior tasks in male Sprague-Dawley rats. JJC8-088, JJC8-089, and RDS3-094 significantly reversed the low-effort bias induced by the VMAT-2 inhibitor tetrabenazine, increasing selection of high-effort fixed ratio 5 lever pressing vs. chow intake. In addition, JJC8-089 reversed the effects of tetrabenazine in female rats. JJC8-088 and JJC8-089 also increased selection of high-effort progressive ratio responding in a choice task. However, JJC8-091 failed to produce these outcomes, potentially due to its unique pharmacological profile (i.e., binding to an occluded conformation of DAT). Assessment of a broad range of DAT inhibitors with different neurochemical characteristics may lead to the identification of compounds that are useful for treating motivational dysfunction in humans.

Effort-related effects of chronic administration of the DA D2 receptor antagonist haloperidol via subcutaneous programmable minipumps: Reversal by co-administration of the adenosine A2A antagonist istradefylline.

RATIONALE: Long-acting antipsychotics such as haloperidol decanoate are becoming more commonly used. Long-acting depot formulations have several advantages, but secondary negative effects of prolonged delivery, including motivational dysfunctions, could have debilitating effects. Assessing the behavioral changes that emerge during chronic antipsychotic administration in rats could provide insight regarding the development of motivational dysfunctions and drug tolerance. OBJECTIVES: Acute administration of dopamine D2 antagonists such as haloperidol induce motivational deficits in rats, as marked by a shift towards a low-effort bias during effort-based choice tasks. In the present studies, programmable subcutaneous infusion pumps provided continuous and controlled drug delivery of haloperidol. Animals were assessed using a fixed ratio (FR) 5 lever pressing schedule and the FR5/chow feeding test of effort-based choice. The adenosine A2A antagonist istradefylline was studied for its ability to reverse the effects of chronic haloperidol. RESULTS: Continuous chronic infusions of haloperidol produced significant reductions in FR5 performance and a shift from lever pressing to chow intake in rats tested on FR5/chow feeding choice, with no evidence of tolerance over the 4-week infusion period. Behavior returned to baseline during the vehicle-infusion washout period. Istradefylline significantly reversed the effects of haloperidol, increasing lever pressing and decreasing chow intake in haloperidol-treated rats. CONCLUSIONS: These studies provide an important behavioral characterization of the effects of chronically infused haloperidol, and demonstrate that A2A antagonism reverses the effects of chronic haloperidol. This research could contribute to the understanding and treatment of motivational dysfunctions seen in schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, and other disorders involving dopamine.

Effects of the atypical antipsychotic and D3/D2 dopamine partial agonist cariprazine on effort-based choice behavior: implications for modeling avolition.

RATIONALE: Cariprazine is an atypical antipsychotic that acts as a D3/D2 receptor partial agonist. In addition to treating positive symptoms of schizophrenia, cariprazine may have utility for treating negative symptoms. Rodent studies have focused on the effects of cariprazine on cognitive functions and behaviors thought to be related to anhedonia. Avolition, which is characterized by reduced initiation and persistence of goal-directed behavior, is another important negative symptom. OBJECTIVES: Effort-related choice tasks have been used as animal models of avolition. In these studies, cariprazine was assessed for its effects on effort-based choice in both rats and mice. Previous work has shown that D2 antagonists such as haloperidol and eticlopride produce a low-effort bias in rodents tested on effort-based choice tasks. RESULTS: Low doses of cariprazine produced a low-effort bias in rats tested on the fixed ratio 5/chow feeding choice task, decreasing lever pressing for high carbohydrate pellets but increasing chow intake. Cariprazine did not alter preference or intake of these foods in free-feeding tests. The effort-related effects of cariprazine were reversed by co-administration of the adenosine A2A antagonist istradefylline, and cariprazine failed to reverse the effort-related effects of the dopamine-depleting agent tetrabenazine. In mouse touchscreen choice tests, low doses of cariprazine also produced a low-effort bias, shifting behavior away from panel pressing. CONCLUSIONS: These results demonstrate that with these rodent models of avolition, cariprazine appears to act like a D2-family antagonist even at very low doses. Furthermore, the pharmacological regulation of avolition may differ from that of other negative symptoms.

Effects of the dopamine depleting agent tetrabenazine on detailed temporal parameters of effort-related choice responding.

The dopamine-depleting agent tetrabenazine alters effort-based choice, suppressing food-reinforced behaviors with high response requirements, while increasing selection of low-cost options. In the present experiments, rats were tested on a concurrent fixed ratio 5/chow feeding choice task, in which high-carbohydrate Bio-serv pellets reinforced lever pressing and lab chow was concurrently available. Detailed timing of lever pressing was monitored with an event recording system, and the temporal characteristics of operant behavior seen after 1.0 mg/kg tetrabenazine or vehicle injections were analyzed. Tetrabenazine shifted choice, decreasing lever pressing but increasing chow intake. There was a small effect on the interresponse-time distribution within ratios, but marked increases in the total duration of pauses in responding. The postreinforcement-pause (PRP) distribution was bimodal, but tetrabenazine did not increase the duration of PRPs. Tetrabenazine increased time feeding and duration and number of feeding bouts, but did not affect feeding rate or total time spent lever pressing for pellets and consuming chow. Thus, TBZ appears to predominantly affect the relative allocation of lever pressing versus chow, with little alteration in consummatory motor acts involved in chow intake. Tetrabenazine is used to model motivational symptoms in psychopathology, and these effects in rats could have implications for psychiatric research.

Complexities and paradoxes in understanding the role of dopamine in incentive motivation and instrumental action: Exertion of effort vs. anhedonia.

Instrumental behavior is a very complex and multifaceted process. Behavioral output during instrumental performance is influenced by a variety of factors, including associative conditioning, directional and activational aspects of motivation, affect, action selection and execution, and decision-making functions. Detailed assessments of instrumental behavior can focus on the temporal characteristics of instrumental behavior such as local frequency and response duration, and biophysical measures of response topography such as force output over time. Furthermore, engaging in motivated behavior can require exertion of effort and effort-based decision making. The present review provides an overview of research on the specific deficits in operant behavior induced by dopamine antagonism and depletion. Furthermore, it discusses research on effort-based decision making, and highlights the complexities and seeming paradoxes that are revealed when detailed analyses of operant behavior are conducted, and instrumental behavior is put in the context of factors such as primary or unconditioned food reinforcement, appetite, binge-like eating, and response choice. Although impairments in mesolimbic dopamine are sometimes labeled as being due to "anhedonia", a detailed deconstruction of the findings in this area of research point to a much more complex and nuanced picture of the role that dopamine plays in regulating instrumental behavior. Low doses of DA antagonists and accumbens dopamine depletions blunt the exertion of physical effort as measured by several different challenges in animal studies (e.g., lever pressing, barrier climbing, wheel running), and yet leave fundamental aspects of hedonic reactivity, food motivation, and reinforcement intact. Continued research on the specific features of instrumental behaviors that regulate the sensitivity to impaired dopamine transmission across a number of contexts is important for resolving some of the complexities that are evident in this area of inquiry. These investigations can also provide insights into psychomotor and motivational dysfunctions that are seen in neuropsychiatric conditions such as depression, schizophrenia, and Parkinson's disease.

A Novel and Selective Dopamine Transporter Inhibitor, (S)-MK-26, Promotes Hippocampal Synaptic Plasticity and Restores Effort-Related Motivational Dysfunctions.

Dopamine (DA), the most abundant human brain catecholaminergic neurotransmitter, modulates key behavioral and neurological processes in young and senescent brains, including motricity, sleep, attention, emotion, learning and memory, and social and reward-seeking behaviors. The DA transporter (DAT) regulates transsynaptic DA levels, influencing all these processes. Compounds targeting DAT (e.g., cocaine and amphetamines) were historically used to shape mood and cognition, but these substances typically lead to severe negative side effects (tolerance, abuse, addiction, and dependence). DA/DAT signaling dysfunctions are associated with neuropsychiatric and progressive brain disorders, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer diseases, drug addiction and dementia, resulting in devastating personal and familial concerns and high socioeconomic costs worldwide. The development of low-side-effect, new/selective medicaments with reduced abuse-liability and which ameliorate DA/DAT-related dysfunctions is therefore crucial in the fields of medicine and healthcare. Using the rat as experimental animal model, the present work describes the synthesis and pharmacological profile of (S)-MK-26, a new modafinil analogue with markedly improved potency and selectivity for DAT over parent drug. Ex vivo electrophysiology revealed significantly augmented hippocampal long-term synaptic potentiation upon acute, intraperitoneally delivered (S)-MK-26 treatment, whereas in vivo experiments in the hole-board test showed only lesser effects on reference memory performance in aged rats. However, in effort-related FR5/chow and PROG/chow feeding choice experiments, (S)-MK-26 treatment reversed the depression-like behavior induced by the dopamine-depleting drug tetrabenazine (TBZ) and increased the selection of high-effort alternatives. Moreover, in in vivo microdialysis experiments, (S)-MK-26 significantly increased extracellular DA levels in the prefrontal cortex and in nucleus accumbens core and shell. These studies highlight (S)-MK-26 as a potent enhancer of transsynaptic DA and promoter of synaptic plasticity, with predominant beneficial effects on effort-related behaviors, thus proposing therapeutic potentials for (S)-MK-26 in the treatment of low-effort exertion and motivational dysfunctions characteristic of depression and aging-related disorders.

Paw preference is associated with behavioural despair and spatial reference memory in male rats.

Paw preference, one of the well-studied behavioural markers of asymmetry, has been associated with affective states and pathologies such as behavioural despair, a rodent model of clinical depression. However, a consistent differential effect of paw preference has not been observed for cognitive functions. In order to investigate the affective properties of paw preference together with its potential cognitive effects, we grouped male Wistar rats as left- or right-pawed, and tested them in the forced swim test and Morris water maze for behavioural despair and spatial memory performance, respectively. We found that left-pawed rats were significantly more susceptible to behavioural despair, while spatial learning performance of the two groups were not different over a five-day Morris water maze task. Left-pawed rats, however, displayed a better reference memory than the right-pawed ones on the subsequent probe trial when the hidden platform of the maze was removed. These findings indicate paw preference as a vulnerability factor for behavioural despair and reveal a previously unknown association between left-paw preference and reference memory performance as assessed in the probe trial of the Morris water maze.

Multilevel Impact of Prenatal Risk and Protective Factors on Stress Biology and Infant Development: Study protocol of BABIP prospective birth cohort from Turkey.

Prenatal environment has long-lasting effects on offspring development and health. Research on prenatal stress identified various mechanisms of these effects, from changes in epigenetic and gene expression profiles to Maternal-Placental-Fetal (MPF) stress biology. There is also evidence for the role of additional risk and protective factors influencing the impact of prenatal stress on maternal and infant outcomes. Considering these findings, we present the study protocol of BABIP, a prospective birth cohort from Turkey. The aim of the project is to investigate the effect of prenatal stress on MPF stress biology (i.e. neuroendocrine, immune and metabolic systems), differential DNA methylation and gene expression patterns, and infant birth and developmental outcomes. We are recruiting 150 pregnant women and their babies for a longitudinal project with 4 time points: 20-24 (T1) and 30-34 (T2) weeks of pregnancy, and 1-month (T3) and 4-months (T4) after giving birth. Maternal early and prenatal environment (prenatal stress, early life stress, psychosocial resources, and health-related behaviors) are assessed during pregnancy with MPF stress biology, DNA methylation and gene expression measures. Infant birth outcomes, DNA methylation and development are assessed postpartum. BABIP is the first prospective birth cohort from Turkey with extensive measures on prenatal environment and health. Through investigating the multilevel impact of prenatal stress and related risk and protective factors during and after pregnancy, BABIP will contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms by which prenatal environment influences infant development and health. Being the first such cohort from Turkey, it may also allow identification of prenatal risk and protective factors specific to the context and population in Turkey.

Oral ketamine alleviates behavioral despair without cognitive impairment in Wistar rats.

Ketamine is a non-competitive NMDA receptor antagonist used as a major anesthetic agent, especially in children. It has also been shown that at sub-anesthetic concentrations, ketamine has acute antidepressant properties. The rapid-onset nature of this effect makes it a promising alternative for classical antidepressants targeting the monoaminergic system. However, ketamine can lead to various cognitive side effects depending on the user/subject as well as its concentration and administration method, and it is still questionable whether this drug can be utilized as a reliable antidepressant. Here, we test the effects of continuous low dose oral ketamine on behavioral despair and spatial working memory in male Wistar rats. We found that 0.4 mg/day, but not 0.2 mg/day, ketamine in 30 ml juice has an antidepressant effect emerging in just 10 consecutive days as measured by means of forced swim tests without impairing spatial working memory performance in the Y-maze for as long as 30 days. These results suggest that, once clinically optimized, long-term use of low dose oral ketamine can produce antidepressant effects.