Exercise for Treatment of Relapse: Behavior and Neurobiology

描述(由申请人提供)：吸毒复发是成瘾治疗中最大的问题。在人类和动物身上的实验证据表明，女性比男性更容易复发，这表明需要针对药物滥用制定针对性别的治疗策略。有氧运动已经成为一种治疗成瘾的有效行为疗法，研究表明，有氧运动可能比男性更有效地减少女性的药物滥用。该项目的长期目标是将运动作为一种治疗男性和女性成瘾的方法。目前的目标是研究有氧运动对雄性和雌性大鼠在长期戒毒后复发的影响；确定运动是否会减少与复发相关的神经适应在大脑中对成瘾至关重要的区域；以及调查运动对雌性和雄性的不同影响。据推测，演习 将减少长期禁欲后的复发，逆转或消除与长期禁欲相关的大脑适应，女性的行动比男性更有效。本实验旨在测试长期戒断静脉注射可卡因的大鼠自愿转轮行走的效果，该项目的训练潜力是提供与行为范式相结合的细胞和分子实验技术的指导。为此，将评估行为测量、蛋白质分析和神经元形态。拟议的实验有可能阐明一种针对复发的新的性别特异性治疗方法，并将深入了解其作用的神经生物学机制。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Relapse to drug abuse is the single greatest problem in addiction treatment. Experimental evidence in humans and animals suggests that females are more prone to relapse than males, identifying a need for sex-specific treatment strategies for drug abuse. Aerobic exercise has emerged as an effective behavioral treatment for addiction, and studies suggest that it might be more effective to decrease drug abuse in females than males. The long-term goal of this project is to characterize exercise as a treatment for addiction in both males and females. The current aims are to examine the effects of aerobic exercise in male and female rats on relapse after a prolonged abstinence from drug use; determine whether exercise will reduce relapse-related neuroadaptations in brain areas important for addiction; and investigate differential effects of exercise in females vs. males. It is hypothesized that exercise will diminish relapse after prolonged abstinence, reverse or eliminate brain adaptations associated with prolonged abstinence, and act more effectively in females than in males. The experiments are designed to test the effects of voluntary wheel running in rats that are in prolonged withdrawal from intravenous cocaine self-administration, and the training potential of this project is to provide instruction in cellular and molecular experimental techniques paired with behavioral paradigms. To this end, behavioral measures, protein analysis, and neuronal morphology will be assessed. The proposed experiments have the potential to elucidate a novel sex-specific treatment for relapse and will give insight into the neurobiological mechanism of its action.