Equipment for assessing the effects of chronic dopamine receptor blockade on reward

所要求的设备是一项研究计划的核心，该计划代表了理解大脑多巴胺（DA）系统如何引导奖励行为的重要一步。DA系统的激活介导了对生存所必需的奖励的追求，包括食物，水和性伴侣。导致超敏感DA系统的条件可能导致过度追求奖励刺激，如药物成瘾，饮食失调和病理性赌博。在实验室中诱导DA超敏性的最广泛使用的模型涉及用DA激动剂（例如，安非他明）。这个模型使我们对DA系统如何调节对奖励的反应的理解取得了重要进展。然而，用阻断DA D2/3受体的化合物长期抑制DA系统也可诱导DA超敏状态。这种替代的和相对未研究的DA超敏感性模型是一个机会，以获得新的见解，大脑的DA系统如何处理奖励，并相应地指导我们的行为。因此，我的研究的目标是确定如何DA超敏性诱导的DA D2/3受体拮抗剂的长期管理实验室大鼠影响药物和非药物奖励的追求。这项工作很重要，因为它将为DA系统在正常和异常条件下如何处理奖励提供新的见解，并且这些知识可以用于开发新的治疗方法，以治疗DA活动过度和奖励功能改变的情况。

The requested equipment is central to a research programme that represents an important step in understanding how the brain's dopamine (DA) system guides behaviour towards rewards. Activation of the DA system mediates the pursuit of rewards necessary for survival, including food, water and sexual partners. Conditions that lead to a supersensitive DA system can lead to the excessive pursuit of rewarding stimuli, as seen in drug addiction, eating disorders and pathological gambling. The most widely-used model to induce DA supersensitivity in the laboratory involves the repeated stimulation of the DA system with DA agonists (e.g., amphetamine). This model has led to important advances in our understanding of how the DA system mediates the response to rewards. However, chronic suppression of the DA system with compounds that block DA D2/3 receptors can also induce a DA supersensitive state. This alternate and relatively unstudied model of DA supersensitivity is an opportunity to gain new insights into how the brain's DA system processes rewards and guides our behaviour accordingly. The goal of my research, therefore, is to determine how DA supersensitivity induced by chronic administration of a DA D2/3 receptor antagonist to laboratory rats influences the pursuit of drug and non-drug rewards. This work is important because it will provide new insights into how the DA system processes rewards under normal and abnormal conditions, and this knowledge could be used to develop new treatments for conditions where DA activity is excessive and reward function is altered.