Lecture summary: In previous studies, we and others have used a rat model of drug relapse and craving to demonstrate time-dependent increases in drug seeking after experimenter-imposed (forced) abstinence from several drugs of abuse (heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, nicotine), a phenomenon we termed incubation of drug craving (Grimm et al. Nature, 2001; Pickens et al. TINS, 2011). In these studies, the rats were removed from their drug self-administration environment during extended periods of forced abstinence. More recently, we have established a rat model in which we observe incubation of drug craving after extended periods of voluntary abstinence in the drug environment. Voluntary abstinence is achieved using a mutually exclusive discrete choice procedure in which food-sated male and female rats with prior extended history of intravenous methamphetamine or heroin self-administration can choose every day (20 trials per day) between the palatable food and the drug. In this lecture, I will present our behavioral, pharmacological, and brain circuit characterization of incubation of drug craving after voluntary abstinence. I will also introduce a novel relapse model in which voluntary abstinence is achieved by providing the rats an alternative social reward.



Biography: Yavin Shaham received his BS and MA from the Hebrew U, Jerusalem, and his PhD from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD. His postdoctoral training was at Concordia U, Montreal, in the laboratory of Dr. Jane Stewart. Prior to joining the NIDA Intramural Research Program as a tenure-track investigator, he was an investigator at the Addiction Research Center in Toronto. He is currently a tenured Branch Chief and a Senior Investigator. His major awards include the NIDA Director’s Award of Merit (2001), the Society of Neuroscience Jacob Waletzky award for innovative research in drug and alcohol addiction (2006), the NARSAD Distinguished Investigator Grant Award (2016), and the European Behavioral Pharmacology Society Distinguished Achievement Award (2017). He has published over 200 empirical papers, reviews, and commentaries, and his papers were cited over 26,500 times (h-factor: 85; Google Scholar). In 2018, Shaham was named by The Web of Science as a “Highly Cited Researcher” (top 1%). He has served as a Reviewing and Senior Editor for The Journal of Neuroscience from 2008 to 2018 and is currently severs as a Reviewing Editor of Neuropsychopharmacology and eNeuro. He is also an editorial board member of Biological Psychiatry, Psychopharmacology, and Addiction Biology. His group currently investigates mechanisms of relapse to heroin, oxycodone, cocaine, and methamphetamine, as assessed in rat models developed in his lab.