Conditioned suppression of behavior maintained by cocaine self-administration.

Shock-paired stimuli have produced conditioned suppression of behavior maintained by a variety of reinforcers such as food, water, sucrose, and intracranial self-stimulation. With the ongoing pursuit of animal models for drug abuse treatment, it is surprising that this procedure for suppressing positively reinforced behavior has never been applied to drug-maintained behavior. The present study applied the conditioned suppression paradigm to behavior maintained by cocaine self-administration in rats. If shock-paired stimuli suppress ongoing cocaine self-administration, this would contrast with recent studies reporting that aversive stimuli can enhance the acquisition and reinstatement of behavior reinforced by cocaine. Rats were trained to bar-press for intravenous cocaine infusions on a variable-interval schedule. Then, a tone conditioned stimulus (CS) and a light CS were each paired with foot-shock while the rats were bar-pressing for cocaine. These CSs each came to reliably suppress responding in all subjects, just as shock-paired CSs suppressed responding by the positive reinforcers mentioned above. When the tone and the light were presented simultaneously in testing, suppression was significantly enhanced over that controlled by the single CSs. These results demonstrate that (1) cocaine-maintained behavior can be suppressed by environmental stimuli associated with non-drug reinforcers; and (2) combining stimuli that decrease drug self-administration can enhance their suppressive effects. Thus, the present findings can have implications for drug treatment.