PSYC 311 Chapter Notes - Chapter 18,4: Critical Role, Classical Conditioning, Nicotine

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 311
• Professor: Michalakis Petrides

Document Summary

For a person with a history of drug abuse, a small dose of a drug increases their appetite or craving for the drug. In addition, through a process of classical conditioning, stimuli that have been associated with drugs in the past can also elicit cravings. One of the ways in which craving has been investigated in laboratory animals is through the reinstatement model of drug seeking. Animals are first trained to make a response that is reinforced by the intravenous injection of a drug. In response to these stimuli, animals begin to execute the initial response once more: this kind of relapse serves as a good model for the craving that motivates drug-seeking behaviour in former addicts. It has been found that the activity of the medial pfc of cocaine abusers is lower than that of normal subjects during abstinence.