Expression of cocaine-induced conditioned place preference in apomorphine susceptible and unsusceptible rats

Differences in cocaine self-administration can be attributed to differences in the rewarding value that cocaine has for the individual. An ongoing debate, however, exists whether a high rewarding or a low rewarding value leads to an increase in self-administration. To investigate which of these two alternatives is correct, we investigated the occurrence of cocaine-induced conditioned place preference in apomorphine susceptible and apomorphine unsusceptible rats. We have recently shown that under specific environmental conditions (challenged-not habituated to the environment-as measured by distance travelled) apomorphine susceptible rats consistently self-administer more cocaine than apomorphine unsusceptible rats do. As conditioned place preference allows the assessment of the rewarding value of cocaine, we investigated the expression of cocaine-induced conditioned place preference in apomorphine susceptible and apomorphine unsusceptible rats under the same conditions as the self-administration experiments in order to establish whether the rewarding value of cocaine is greater or smaller in challenged apomorphine susceptible rats than in challenged apomorphine unsusceptible rats. The data clearly showed that challenged apomorphine susceptible rats had a preference for the cocaine-paired compartment with lower doses of cocaine (10 mg/kg) than challenged apomorphine unsusceptible rats. Apomorphine unsusceptible rats expressed conditioned place preference only with the highest dose tested (20 mg/kg). On the basis of these data, we concluded that the rewarding value that cocaine has in challenged apomorphine susceptible rats is greater than that in challenged apomorphine unsusceptible rats. It is suggested that challenged apomorphine susceptible rats self-administer more of a lower dose of cocaine than challenged apomorphine unsusceptible rats do, because the rewarding value of cocaine is greater in challenged apomorphine susceptible rats than in challenged apomorphine unsusceptible rats.