The impact of pharmacological and psychological factors on measures of nicotine and tobacco reinforcement and related neural responses.

大多数以实验室为基础的人类药物强化研究往往侧重于检查单一物质或在某些情况下，其个别成分(例如，尼古丁而不是烟草)的药理作用。然而，由于许多药理学和心理学因素可以影响人类的药物反应，从实验上往往不清楚所观察到的药物效应在多大程度上可以直接归因于药物的药理特性。例如，与尼古丁相关的强化指数可能受到烟草中其他精神活性成分的存在或不存在、服用烟草的途径、传递速率以及心理过程的影响，如相信一个人摄入了尼古丁。由于这些因素中的每一个都可能独立或相互结合地影响各种加固措施，目前几乎没有明确的证据表明任何给定的影响可以归因于单一因素。我的研究项目旨在确定各种药理学和非药理学因素如何影响药物强化的实验指数，并以尼古丁和烟草相关效应为模型，以及确定这些不同因素涉及可分离的潜在神经过程的程度。为了做到这一点，我计划在一系列实验中操纵不同产品(如香烟、蒸发器、含片)的尼古丁含量和尼古丁含量预期，这些实验将评估与药物相关的不同指数。此外，在确定了影响不同强化措施的特定药物和心理因素后，我计划使用功能磁共振成像来确定这些影响所涉及的神经过程。

Most laboratory-based studies of drug-related reinforcement in humans tend to focus on examining the pharmacological effects of single substances or, in some cases, of their individual constituents (e.g., nicotine rather than tobacco). However, because a number of pharmacological and psychological factors can impact drug responses in humans, it is often unclear from experiments to what extent an observed drug effect can be directly attributed to the pharmacological properties of the drug. For example, indices of nicotine-related reinforcement might be influenced by the presence or absence of other psychoactive constituents found in tobacco, the route by which it is taken, its rate of delivery, and by psychological processes such as the belief that one has ingested nicotine. Because each of these factors might impact various measures of reinforcement either independently or in combination with each other, there is currently little unequivocal evidence that any given effect can be attributed to a single factor. My program of research aims to determine how various pharmacological and non-pharmacological factors impact experimental indices of drug reinforcement, using nicotine and tobacco related effects as a model, as well as to determine the extent to which these different factors involve separable underlying neural processes. In order to do so, I plan to manipulate the nicotine contents and nicotine content expectations of various products (e.g. cigarettes, vaporizers, lozenges) in a series of experiments that will assess different indices drug-related reinforcement. In addition, following the identification of specific pharmacological and psychological factors that impact the different reinforcement measures, I plan to use functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural processes involved in those effects.