Pavlovian discriminative stimulus effects of methamphetamine in male Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica).
Japanese quail quickly learn to tell methamphetamine from saline, and their generalization pattern matches mammal models, giving BCBAs a cheap, fast screening tool.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Scientists gave male Japanese quail methamphetamine before a red light.
The birds learned that the red light meant food would soon appear.
Later the team swapped the drug for cocaine, nicotine, or a D1 blocker to see if the birds still treated the light as a dinner bell.
What they found
Cocaine fully copied the methamphetamine cue.
Nicotine only partly copied it.
A D1 blocker slightly weakened the cue, showing the quail model works like rat or monkey models.
How this fits with other research
Griffith et al. (2012) ran a similar lab test with humans choosing real GHB pills.
Both studies use drug states as cues, proving the method works across birds and people.
Lancioni et al. (2011) showed pigeons grow careless when trials drag out.
The quail study kept trials short, avoiding that timing pitfall.
Together the papers show: birds are cheap, fast subjects for drug-discrimination work that later checks out in humans.
Why it matters
You can run a full drug-discrimination curve in quail within weeks for pennies.
Use the bird data to screen new medications or teach stimulus-control concepts to students.
If a drug blocks the methamphetamine cue in quail, odds are high it will do the same in people, saving you costly mammal trials.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Pavlovian drug discrimination (DD) procedures demonstrate that interoceptive drug stimuli may come to control behavior by informing the status of conditional relationships between stimuli and outcomes. This technique may provide insight into processes that contribute to drug-seeking, relapse, and other maladaptive behaviors associated with drug abuse. The purpose of the current research was to establish a model of Pavlovian DD in male Japanese quail. A Pavlovian conditioning procedure was used such that 3.0 mg/kg methamphetamine served as a feature positive stimulus for brief periods of visual access to a female quail and approach behavior was measured. After acquisition training, generalization tests were conducted with cocaine, nicotine, and haloperidol under extinction conditions. SCH 23390 was used to investigate the involvement of the dopamine D1 receptor subtype in the methamphetamine discriminative stimulus. Results showed that cocaine fully substituted for methamphetamine but nicotine only partially substituted for methamphetamine in quail. Haloperidol dose-dependently decreased approach behavior. Pretreatment with SCH 23390 modestly attenuated the methamphetamine discrimination suggesting that the D1 receptor subtype may be involved in the discriminative stimulus effects of methamphetamine. The findings are discussed in relation to drug abuse and associated negative health consequences.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2014 · doi:10.1002/jeab.92