Logo image
Back
Effects of systemically administered cocaine on sensory responses to peri-threshold vibrissae stimulation: individual cells, ensemble activity, and animal behaviour
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Effects of systemically administered cocaine on sensory responses to peri-threshold vibrissae stimulation: individual cells, ensemble activity, and animal behaviour

John J Rutter, David M Devilbiss and Barry D Waterhouse
The European journal of neuroscience, v 22(12), pp 3205-3216
Dec 2005
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-9568.2005.04500.x
PMID: 16367787
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-9568.2005.04500.xView
Published, Version of Record (VoR)Maybe Open Access (Publisher Bronze),  Open

Abstract

Action Potentials - drug effects Anesthetics, Local - administration & dosage Animals Behavior, Animal - drug effects Cocaine - administration & dosage Conditioning, Operant - drug effects Conditioning, Operant - physiology Discrimination (Psychology) - drug effects Discrimination (Psychology) - physiology Dose-Response Relationship, Drug Male Neurons - drug effects Physical Stimulation Principal Component Analysis Rats Rats, Long-Evans Sensory Thresholds - drug effects Thalamus - cytology Time Factors Vibrissae - drug effects Vibrissae - innervation
Previous studies have shown that systemic administration of cocaine transiently alters stimulus-evoked responses of ventral posteromedial (VPM) thalamic neurons. Results from these single-unit electrophysiological studies revealed that cocaine was equally likely to augment or attenuate the magnitude of sensory evoked responses following threshold level stimulation of peripheral receptive fields. In an attempt to clarify the impact of cocaine administration on sensory signal processing, we examined the drug's effects on responses of individual neurons and ensembles of VPM thalamic neurons to sensory stimuli, and performance of subjects in a sensory detection behavioural task. Extracellular responses of single (n = 1 cell/rat) or multiple VPM thalamic neurons (n = 10-40 cells/rat) were monitored before and after cumulative doses of cocaine (0.25-2.0 mg/kg i.v.). Neuronal responses were characterized by assessing the response profile to a range of peri-threshold-level deflections of the optimal whisker on the contralateral face. Drug effects on stimulus-response curves, determined from quantitative analysis of spike train data, indicated that whereas cocaine elicits variable effects at the single cell level, the stimulus-evoked response of the recorded population was likely to increase following lower (0.25-1.0 mg/kg i.v.) doses of cocaine. Furthermore, cocaine preferentially enhanced responses to smaller magnitude deflections of vibrissa, altering the response profile from a mode that accurately conveyed stimulus strength to one that increased detection at the expense of discrimination. Finally, a similar pattern emerged in a behavioural paradigm involving rats trained to detect variable amplitude whisker pad stimulation, suggesting a common action of cocaine that may contribute to the drug's addictive properties.

Metrics

11 Record Views
13 citations in Web of Science
13 citations in Scopus

Details

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Neurosciences
Logo image