Drug Discrimination Studies

Oberlender, R., and Nichols, D.E. Drug discrimination studies with MDMA and amphetamine. Psychopharmacology (Berlin) 95 71-76, 1988. 

Woodward, J.J., Mansbach, R., Carroll, F.I., and Balster, R.L., Cocaethylene inhibits dopamine uptake and produces cocaine-like actions in drug discrimination studies, Eur. J. Pharmacol., 197, 235, 1991. 

More rarely, navigation of a T-maze has been used for drug discrimination studies. Early studies used a T-maze procedure where rats were trained to select one of the two arms when nicotine was administered, whereas entries into the opposite arm were punished by foot-shock (Romano et al. 1981 Schechter and Rosecrans 1971a, b Overton 1982). Nicotine proved to have moderate relative discriminability, as measured by the sessions to criterion performance (20 sessions at 0.55 mg kg Overton 1982). More recently, a food-rewarded discrimination procedure using a T-maze has been described, but no studies involving nicotine have been identified (Colombo et al. 1996). 

Many studies reviewed by Tanda and Goldberg (2000) have found evidence for interactions of nicotine with caffeine and drug discrimination studies have further expanded these investigations (Sect. 6.6). The bidirectional, dose-dependent nature of caffeine effects on nicotine discrimination invites comparisons with parallel studies of nicotine self-adminisfration. However, whereas very large chronic doses of caffeine that were much above those obtained by consumers of caffeinated beverages potentiated nicotine self-administration (Shoaib et al. 1999), there is a... 

Abreu ME, Griffiths RR (1996) Drug tasting may confound human drug discrimination studies. Psychopharmacology 125 255-257... 

Jackson A, Stephens D, Duka T. Gender differences in response to lorazepam in a human drug discrimination study. J Psychopharmacol 2005 19(6) 614—9. 

Drug discrimination study A research procedure that primarily concerns the dilTcrcntiation of drug effects ((Miapter 5). 

In withdrawn morphine-dependent rhesus monkeys, the morphinones exacerbated withdrawal at very low doses. Withdrawal effects persisted even after morphine administration (3 mg/kg, 6 hourly) was resumed [23]. Self-administration and drug discrimination studies in rhesus monkeys were also included in this report. In the drug discrimination assay the codeinones all generalised to codeine. The 4 -bromo- and 4 -methylcinnamoylaminodihydrocodeinones (40b, 40c) were also self-administered but at rates that were below those of codeine [22]. These results confirmed the MOR partial agonist character of the codeinones. 

Larger animals, including rats, cats, and monkeys, are studied in a sleep laboratory. In these studies, electrophysiologic and electroencephalographic measurements are obtained and often are helpful in gaining information about the site of action of CNS depressants as well as about induced sleep patterns. Drug discrimination studies also have been useful in differentiating sites of action of CNS depressants. 

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