Exercise for Treatment of Relapse: Behavior and Neurobiology

描述（由申请人提供）：药物滥用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，这就确定了需要针对不同性别的药物滥用治疗策略。有氧运动已经成为一种有效的成瘾行为治疗方法，研究表明，它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治疗男性和女性成瘾的一种手段。目前的目的是研究有氧运动对长期戒断吸毒后复发的影响;确定运动是否会减少成瘾重要脑区的复发相关神经适应;并研究运动对女性与男性的差异影响。据推测，运动 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，并且对女性比男性更有效。实验的目的是测试自愿轮运行的影响，在长期退出静脉注射可卡因自我管理的大鼠，该项目的培训潜力是提供指导，在细胞和分子实验技术与行为范例配对。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新的性别特异性治疗复发，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.