Methods
Summary
Rats and housing. Adult Sprague-Dawley rats will be ordered from Charles River Laboratories and will acclimate to our university's temperature- and humidity-controlled vivarium for one week before surgery. Food and water will be freely provided.
Drug self-administration. Rats will undergo jugular vein catheterization surgery under full anesthesia. This surgical procedure allows an access port to connect a drug-dispensing syringe. Rats will then be trained to self-administer MDPV (0.03 mg/kg/infusion) by lever pressing in a polycarbonate chamber for 14 consecutive 2-hour sessions. Thus, the Experimenters will not be giving MDPV to rats per se but rather allow rats to give themselves MDPV in turn modeling the voluntary component of taking drugs in humans. After training ("acquisition"), ~7 days of extinction training will begin where lever pressing no longer results in MDPV infusions. Finally, two reinstatement tests (cued and drug-primed) will take place.
Antibiotic treatment regimens. Ceftriaxone and clavulanic acid will be dissolved in saline and administered i.p. Both compounds will be administered during the second week of training (days 8-14) as well as during extinction. All injections will take place 2 hours prior to self-administration or extinction training.
Ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs). Condenser microphones suspend above polycarbonate chambers and will be used to record ultrasounds from rats. Thereafter, software will be used to manually detect USVs offline.
Protocols
This project has not yet shared any protocols.