COCAINE REWARD SUSCEPTIBILITY IS RELATED TO PUBERTAL RISK-TAKING BEHAVIOUR IN PRENATALLY STRESSED OFFSPRING

PALLARÉS, MARÍA EUGENIA; PASTOR, VERONICA; ANTONELLI, MARTA CRISTINA; SANABRIA, VALERIA

París

Congreso; 2017 ISN-ESN Biennal Meeting; 2017

Gestational stress induces long-lasting neuro­chemical changes in the offspring and in­creases vulnerability to drug-seeking behaviour during adulthood. Since sensitivity to drug-induced reward is highly hetero­geneo­us among individuals there is an urgent need to recog­nize pre­dictive factors of drug reward vulnerability for a pro­per diagnosis and de­velop­ment of effective treat­ments. The aim of the pre­sent study was to iden­ti­fy early behavioural traits related to an adult in­creased vulnerability to cocaine reward. Employing a pre­natal restrain­t stress model in rats, we evalu­ated novelty re­sponse, anxiety-like and risk-taking behaviours during puberty and its rela­tion­ship with individual differences in cocaine-induced conditioning place pre­ference during adulthood. Our results show that pre­natal stress impacts differently in the pubertal offspring behaviour leading to two different populations: a low anxiety/high risk-taking population during puberty that will search for the rewarding pro­perties of cocaine later in life and a high anxiety/low risk-taking population with low pre­ference for cocaine during adulthood. This study clearly under­scores the importance of early detection of behavioural traits opening the possibility of timely in­ter­vention to avoid the devastating consequences of drug addiction later in life. More­over, studying individual differences of drug responsiveness is a key strategy to under­stand the under­lying mole­cular mecha­nisms of vulnerability or resilience to the establishment of substance use dis­orders fol­lowing drug exposure