Conditioned place preference and behavioral analysis to evaluate nicotine reinforcement properties in zebrafish

FAILLACE AND BERNABEU

"Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor Technologies" Series: Neuromethods

Springer

Año: 2016;

Studies with mice and rats have demonstrated that nicotine induces a conditioned place preference (CPP). Zebrafish have also been used as a model system to identify factors influencing nicotine-associated reward. The protocol described here was designed to establish nicotine-CPP in zebrafish by using biased or unbiased approaches. The protocol design is based in nicotine/environment associations (nicotine-paired group). Since nicotine have an anxiolytic effect, we used a counterbalanced nicotine-exposed control group, which did not show a significant place preference shift, providing evidence that the preference shift in the nicotine-paired group was not due to a reduction of aversion for this compartment. Zebrafish nicotine-induced place preference was corroborated by behavioral analysis of several indicators of drug preference, such as time spent in the drug-paired side, number of entries to the drug paired side, and distance traveled. This method provided strong evidence that zebrafish may actually develop a preference for nicotine, although the drug was administrated in an aversive place for the fish. Moreover, molecular studies served to further support behavioral data. This methodology offers an incremental value to the drug addiction field, because it better describes behavioral features of CPP to nicotine in zebrafish. Therefore, this model can be used to screen exogenous and endogenous molecules involved in nicotine-associated reward in vertebrates.