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Summary: A new study looks at the role frustration plays in driving addiction.
Source: UTMB Galveston
A team from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) focused on drug addiction research have pioneered a new way to study frustration as a factor in substance use disorders. The study was published in the medical journal Psychopharmacology.
Traditional addiction research has focused on three aspects of substance use disorders: craving, impulsivity, or habit. Scientists hypothesized that a fourth factor, frustration, could also lead to escalation of drug use and addiction.
The Psychopharmacology paper noted that research into the role of frustration and substance use disorders is sparse, but a number of studies suggest that persons with substance use disorders have lower frustration tolerance. Studies have shown that sensitivity to frustration correlates with relapse among those with substance use disorders.
The UTMB studies used a rat model to focus on frustration-related behavior. Rats can be trained to press a lever for food or drugs (reinforcers), and frustration is defined as when a subject is unable to achieve a reinforcer, receives less of a reinforcer than anticipated, or has to work harder to achieve a reinforcer.
“An example of frustration behavior is when someone can’t get the channel on the TV to change or when an elevator takes too long to arrive. People will often respond to both situations by pressing the button repeatedly or holding the button longer with repeated attempts. This typical human response to frustration is the same in rats. In our study, rats were trained to press a lever for delivery of either a sucrose pellet or an intravenous infusion of a synthetic opioid. If they didn’t get what they expected, they would press the lever more frequently and for longer periods of time,” said Dr. Thomas A. Green, of UTMB’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology.
“When a rat presses a lever repeatedly that was supposed to deliver a banana-flavored sucrose pellet, but the pellets never arrive, they hold the levers down longer as the frustration builds,” he said.
Tileena Vasquez, a doctoral candidate in UTMB’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and the lead author of the paper, said the study showed all rats would press a lever for intravenous infusions of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, but about 10% of rats would escalate their intake of fentanyl to about double that of the average rat.
“Even as the escalating rats take massive amounts of drug, their bar presses get longer (in some cases up to 10 minutes long), even though long bar presses do not increase the amount of drug delivered,” Vasquez said, adding that the conclusion is that these susceptible rats, even though they are taking as much fentanyl as their bodies can handle, are frustrated that they are still not getting enough drug to satisfy them.
Green says the study has obvious implications for future studies of opioid use disorder and will help scientists understand how frustration, as well as craving, impulsivity and habit can lead to opioid escalation.
Authors of the study include Tileena E.S. Vasquez, Ryan J. McAuley. Nikita S. Gupta, Shyny Koshy, and Yorkiris Marmol-Contreres and Thomas A. Green.
Funding: The research was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse grant DA047102 (TAG) and a pilot grant from the UTMB Center for Addiction Research.
Table of Contents
About this addiction research news
Source: UTMB Galveston
Contact: Connie Holubar – UTMB Galveston
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Closed access.
“Lever-press duration as a measure of frustration in sucrose and drug reinforcement” by Thomas A. Green et al. Psychopharmacology
Abstract
See also
Lever-press duration as a measure of frustration in sucrose and drug reinforcement
Rationale
Currently there is little research into the role of frustration in substance use disorders despite research showing that frustration tolerance in humans is associated with a lower likelihood of developing substance use problems, better outcomes in recovery, and fewer relapses.
Objective
In order to address this need, our studies use a rat model to focus on frustration-related behavior in natural reward and addiction-related behavioral procedures. Frustration is defined as when a subject is unable to achieve a reinforcer, receives less of a reinforcer than anticipated, or has to work harder to achieve a reinforcer.
Results
In these studies, bar-press durations increase when rats are in a state of frustration during self-administration of sucrose, fentanyl, or cocaine.
Conclusions
These data also show that average bar-press durations do not correlate with the number of bar presses, meaning that press duration is an independent measurement that represents a behavioral construct distinct from craving, which is typically measured with number of bar presses. Essentially, these results support that bar press durations can be used as a real-time measure of frustration as a 4th major facet of addiction-related behavior, adding to craving, impulsivity, and habit.
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