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Role of learning in drug tolerance - Coggle Diagram
Role of learning in drug tolerance
Contingent Drug Tolerance
Demonstrations that tolerance develops only to drug effects that are actually experienced.
Before-and-after designs to study it
But the subjects in one group receive the drug before each test
Those in the other group receive the drug after each test.
At the end, all subjects receive the same dose of the drug followed by the test
So that the degree to which drug disrupts test performance in the two groups can be compared.
Two groups of subjects receive
Same series of drug injections and same series of repeated tests
Conditioned Drug Tolerance
Focus is on the situations in which drugs are taken.
Demonstrations that tolerance effects are maximally expressed:
In which it has previously been administered
Only when a drug is administered in the same situation
Situational specificity of drug tolerance by Siegel
Addicts become tolerant when they repeatedly self-administer their drug in the same environment
In an unusual situation, tolerance effects are not present to counteract the effects of the drug
There is a greater risk of death from overdose
Addicts may be susceptible to lethal effects of a drug overdose
When the drug is administered in a new context.
Each incidence of drug administration is like Pavlovian conditioning
Various environmental stimuli (e.g., bars, washrooms, needles, or other addicts) are conditional stimuli
Drug is the unconditional stimulus.
Central assumption of the theory:
CS that predict drug administration come to elicit CR opposite to the unconditional effects of the drug.
Conditioned compensatory responses.
Stimuli that repeatedly predict the effects of a drug elicit greater and greater conditioned compensatory responses
They increasingly counteract the unconditional effects of the drug
And produce situationally specific tolerance
Most demonstrations of conditioned drug tolerance have employed exteroceptive stimuli as the CS
External, public stimuli, such as the drug-administration environment.
But interoceptive stimuli (internal, private stimuli) equally effective
Just thinking about a drug can evoke conditioned compensatory responses.
Sometimes there is drug sensitization
Can be situationally specific like tolerance
Eg: Situational specificity of sensitization to the motor stimulant effects of amphetamine.
10 amphetamine injections, 1 every 3 or 4 days to rats
Greatly increased the ability of amphetamine to activate the motor activity of rats
But only when the rats were injected and tested in the same environment
Where they had experienced the previous amphetamine injections.
Thinking about Drug Conditioning
Problem of most theories of drug conditioning:
Difficulty predicting the direction of the conditioned effects.
Conditioned compensatory response theory:
Conditioned drug effects will always be opposite to the unconditioned effects of the drug
But many instances suggest that conditional stimuli elicit responses similar to those of drug.
Ramsay and Woods (1997):
Much of the confusion stems from a misunderstanding of Pavlovian conditioning.
UCS is not the drug
UCR is not the change in physiology or behavior
Instead UCS is:
Disruption of neural functioning
Directly produced by the drug
UCR are:
Various neurally mediated compensatory reactions to the UCS.