This application proposes experiments intended to develop improved behavioral methods for categorizing abused drugs, and/or for determining the abuse liability of drugs. All are based on the drug discrimination technique. Experiment 1 will test for the occurrence of stimulus masking in the drug discrimination preparation, to determine whether this is a frequent or rare phenomenon. Experiment 2 will test for the occurrence of cue overlap between the sensory effects of drugs which produce pharmacologically dissimilar actions. Experiment 3 will determine the degree to which the specificity of the DD paradigm varies as a function of the training dosage employed. Experiment 4 involves training with a mixture of two different drug cues in order to determine whether perception of drug stimuli is analytic or synthetic in nature, and to investigate individual differences between animals i cue usage when more than one cue is available. Experiment 5 investigates the degree to which the drug stimuli present at the time of onset of drug actions differ from those which occur later. Experiments 6-8 will investigate the utility of a novel multiple-drug training procedure which is designed to allow concurrent discrimination of several training drugs. A total of 8 separate experiments are proposed using rats and pigeons as subjects.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
2R01DA002403-10
Application #
3207306
Study Section
Drug Abuse Clinical and Behavioral Research Review Committee (DACB)
Project Start
1979-08-01
Project End
1992-06-30
Budget Start
1989-09-30
Budget End
1990-06-30
Support Year
10
Fiscal Year
1989
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Temple University
Department
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
City
Philadelphia
State
PA
Country
United States
Zip Code
19122
Overton, Donald A; Stanwood, Gregg D; Patel, Bhavesh N et al. (2009) Measurement of the lowest dosage of phenobarbital that can produce drug discrimination in rats. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 203:213-8
Overton, Roger L; Overton, Donald A (2007) A high-sensitivity drinkometer circuit with 60-Hz filtering. Behav Res Methods 39:118-22
Overton, D A; Shen, C F; Tatham, T A (1993) Centrally acting drugs act as conditioned stimuli in a conditioned suppression of drinking task. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 112:270-6
Overton, D A (1991) A historical perspective on drug discrimination. NIDA Res Monogr :5-24
Overton, D A; Shen, C F; Ke, G Y et al. (1989) Discriminable effects of phencyclidine analogs evaluated by multiple drug (PCP versus OTHER) discrimination training. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 97:514-20
Overton, D A; Shen, C F (1988) Comparison of four-drug discriminations in training compartments with four identical levers versus four different responses manipulanda. Pharmacol Biochem Behav 30:879-88
Overton, D A (1988) Similarities and differences between behavioral control by drug-produced stimuli and by sensory stimuli. Psychopharmacol Ser 4:176-98
Overton, D A; Leonard, W R; Merkle, D A (1986) Methods for measuring the strength of discriminable drug effects. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 10:251-63