Pharmacology of Stimulant Choice

This new R01 application proposes a systematic series of experiments focused on drug-choice procedures in male and female rats to evaluate the muscarinic acetylcholine receptor (mAChR)1 agonist VU0364572 as a candidate medication for treatment of cocaine and methamphetamine use disorder. This application is founded on the premise that stimulant use disorder in humans can be studied using preclinical assays of drug-vs-food choice that model clinical aspects of behavioral misallocation and decision making between concurrently available drugs and an alternative nondrug reinforcer. We propose to determine 1) VU0364572 effects on cocaine-food and cocaine-social choice, 2) VU0364572 effects on methamphetamine-food and methamphetamine-social choice, and 3) VU0364572 effects on nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex dopamine release using dLight.