Nicotine blocks latent inhibition in rats: evidence for a critical role of increased functional activity of dopamine in the mesolimbic system at conditioning rather than pre-exposure

Latent inhibition (LI) is a cognitive process whereby repeated exposure of a stimulus without consequence impedes the formation of subsequent associations with that stimulus. A number of studies in the rat have reported that LI is impaired by moderate systemic doses of amphetamine, an effect believed to be mediated via dopamine (DA) release in the nucleus accumbens. We and others have reported that nicotine has a selective effect in releasing DA in the accumbens rather than the caudate nucleus. We have therefore examined the ability of nicotine to disrupt LI, using a conditioned emotional response paradigm. Pre-exposure of a tone stimulus impaired subsequent conditioning between that stimulus and mild footshock, as indexed by suppression of licking by the tone subsequently presented alone. This LI effect was prevented, by an effect confined to the pre-exposed group, by doses of 0.4 or 0.6 mg/kg nicotine SC, which are accumbens selective, given before pre-exposure and before conditioning. The effect of nicotine in disrupting LI was prevented by prior administration of haloperidol at a dose (0.5 mg/kg) reported to reverse the disruptive effect of amphetamine on LI. Although the amphetamine effect requires two administrations, the effect of two administrations of nicotine was reproduced by a single dose of nicotine given before conditioning, but not by a single dose before pre-exposure. The results are discussed in relation to studies in human control and schizophrenic subjects, which suggest that increased DA activity in humans is also associated with impaired LI. The results indicate that nicotine does indeed increase functional DA activity in the rat accumbens; the consequent disruption of LI critically depends upon an action at the time of conditioning, and is independent of processes which occur during pre-exposure. In more general terms, this indicates the potential of drug experiments to complement behavioural studies on the mechanism of latent inhibition.