Chronic tobacco use continues to be a worldwide public health problem. Presently, there is an emphasis on smoking cessation which is prompting the development of new pharmacotherapies and treatment programs. Unfortunately, relapse after a brief period of smoking cessation is common. Most people attribute the relapse to the occurrence of withdrawal symptoms. Examination of behavioral and neurochemical changes that occur during nicotine withdrawal will help provide insight into nicotine relapse. Better understanding of these processes will result in the development of more effective cessation and prevention programs. The experiments in the present proposal seek to examine the effects of nicotine withdrawal on two behavioral preparations widely used in our laboratory. The first preparation assesses place preference conditioned by access to novel objects (i.e., novelty reward). Rats receive repeated access to novel object in one environment and no objects in another equally experienced environment. In a post-conditioning test that occurs in the absence of any objects, rats show a preference for the environment previously paired with novel. The second preparation assesses preference for a novel object over a familiar object (i.e., novelty seeking). In this task rats are presented with an object for a specific amount of time. The rats are returned to the environment 1 h later, but now have free-access to a novel object and the previously experienced object. During this novel- object test rats spend more time interacting with the novel object than the familiar object. Based on related research and theory, we predict that nicotine withdrawal will affect rats' response to novelty as assessed by these tasks.
