The Effects of Amphetamine on Rats from Varying Rearing Conditions

Drug use is an important problem that causes many social, mental, and physical problems to millions of individuals worldwide. Research is often conducted to analyze the effects of gender and rearing conditions on drug abuse, as well as to investigate the neurobiological basis behind drug use. In this study, groups of rats of different gender and rearing condition were put into amphetamine self-administration testing chambers for six hours at a time to see what differences there were in infusions, lever responses, and timeout responses. It was found that gender and rearing condition had little effect between each other, but an increase of use was found over the multiple testing sessions. In addition to this, after a resting period rats that were administered N-Acetylcysteine were seen to almost always reduce infusions during the final testing period. The results found in this study solidify the ideas of escalation and tolerance, and they introduce N-Acetylcysteine as a possible option for preventing relapses after rehabilitation from drug abuse