Journal Article

The Impact of Selective Dopamine D2, D3 and D4 Ligands on the Rat Gambling Task

Le Foll, Bernard, Boileau, Isabelle, Di Ciano, Patricia, Ramzi, Abby, Pushparaj, Abhiram, Masood, Talal, Kim, Aaron, Khaled, Maram A. T. M., Winstanley, Catherine A., Hatch, Jessica

2015

Overview

Gambling is an addictive disorder with serious societal and personal costs. To-date, there are no approved pharmacological treatments for gambling disorder. Evidence suggests a role for dopamine in gambling disorder and thus may provide a therapeutic target. The present study therefore aimed to investigate the effects of selective antagonists and agonists of D2, D3 and D4 receptors in a rodent analogue of the Iowa gambling task used clinically. In this rat gambling task (rGT), animals are trained to associate different response holes with different magnitudes and probabilities of food pellet rewards and punishing time-out periods. As in the Iowa gambling task, the optimal strategy is to avoid the tempting high-risk high-reward options, and instead favor those linked to smaller per-trial rewards but also lower punishments, thereby maximizing the amount of reward earned over time. Administration of those selective ligands did not affect decision making under the rGT. Only the D4 drug had modest effects on latency measures suggesting that D4 may contribute in some ways to decision making under this task.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Animals / Antagonists / Choice (Psychology) / Conditioning, Operant / Decision making / Decision Making - drug effects / Dopamine / Dopamine Agents - pharmacology / Dopamine Antagonists - pharmacology / Dopamine D2 Receptor Antagonists - pharmacology / Dopamine D2 receptors / Dopamine D3 receptors / Dopamine D4 receptors / Drug therapy / Gambling / Games, Experimental / Gaming machines / Health aspects / Laboratories / Latency / Ligands / Male / Optimization / Pharmacology / Psychological aspects / Punishment / Rats / Rats, Long-Evans / Reaction Time - drug effects / Receptors / Receptors, Dopamine D2 - agonists / Receptors, Dopamine D2 - physiology / Receptors, Dopamine D3 - agonists / Receptors, Dopamine D3 - antagonists & inhibitors / Receptors, Dopamine D3 - physiology / Receptors, Dopamine D4 - agonists / Receptors, Dopamine D4 - antagonists & inhibitors / Receptors, Dopamine D4 - physiology / Reinforcement / Reward / Rewards (Psychology) / Rodents