Cocaine-induced Place Preference using Virtual Reality

描述(申请人提供)：本实验的目的是利用虚拟现实来确定人类对可卡因的地点偏好。具体地说，我们将研究在两种不同的虚拟现实环境中使用可卡因后，人类偏好是如何变化的。一旦为利用虚拟现实研究药物使用的背景效应奠定了基础，我们就可以提出第二阶段的研究，研究各种药物如何阻止获取和/或检索获得药物的地方的偏好。此外，我们将利用目前的实验结果来设计状态II研究，使用功能磁共振成像来确定与各种类型的药物使用和滥用有关的大脑回路。 拟议研究的具体目标如下： 1)确定人类是否会在虚拟环境中表现出对可卡因的条件性地点偏好。 2)确定生理指标(例如心率和皮肤电反应)是否会表明在以前与可卡因配对的无毒品环境中唤醒能力增强。这是一种非语言的唤醒方式。 3)为了确定语言上对可卡因的渴望程度，视觉类比量表(VAS)是否会表明受试者在以前与可卡因配对的无毒品环境中对可卡因表现出更大的渴望。 4)确定可卡因依赖者是否比娱乐性吸毒者表现出更强的场所偏好、更强的生理指标和更高的渴求指标。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The purpose of this experiment is to use virtual reality to establish place preferences to cocaine in humans. Specifically, we will examine how human preferences change after administering cocaine in one of two distinct virtual reality environments. Once this groundwork is established for studying contextual effects on drug use using virtual reality, we can propose Stage II studies that examine how various medications block the acquisition and/or retrieval of preferences for places where drugs were obtained. In addition, we would use the results of the current experiment to design State II studies that use functional magnetic resonance imaging to determine the brain circuits involved in various types of drug use and abuse. The specific aims of the proposed research are as follows: 1) To determine whether humans will display a conditioned place preference to cocaine in a virtual environment. 2) To determine whether physiological measures (e.g. heart rate and galvanic skin response) will indicate increased arousal in a drug-free environment that was previously paired with cocaine. This serves as a nonverbal measure of arousal. 3) To determine whether a verbal measure of cravings, the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), will indicate that subjects show a greater craving for cocaine in a drug-free environment that was previously paired with cocaine. 4) To determine whether individuals who are cocaine-dependent show stronger place preferences, stronger physiological measures, and higher craving measures than individuals who are recreational users of cocaine.