Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Exploring The Effects Of Nicotine On Reward Learning In Female Sprague-Dawley Rats, Brendan Atticks

Summer Scholarship, Creative Arts and Research Projects (SCARP)

Nicotine addiction harms millions of individuals worldwide: financially, socially, and psychologically. Successful smoking cessation could dramatically improve the quality of life for these people. A key driver of smoking relapse centers around associated environmental cues, which induces craving and drives a smoker to re-initiate smoking. Previous work has shown that nicotine can enhance the reinforcing properties of reward-associated cues in male rats. This research aims to evaluate nicotine’s effect on female rats using a behavioral assay called “cue-induced reward-seeking.” In this behavioral assay, rats are trained to press a lever that produces liquid sucrose along with an audiovisual cue. After …