Browsing by Author "Berg, Sarah A."

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Nicotine effects in adolescence and adulthood on cognition and α₄β₂-nicotinic receptors in the neonatal ventral hippocampal lesion rat model of schizophrenia
    (Springer, 2015-05) Berg, Sarah A.; Sentir, Alena M.; Bell, Richard L.; Engleman, Eric A.; Chambers, R. Andrew; Department of Psychiatry, IU School of Medicine
    Rational Nicotine use in schizophrenia has traditionally been explained as ‘self-medication’ of cognitive and/or nicotinic acetylcholinergic receptor (nAChR) abnormalities. Objectives We test this hypothesis in a neurodevelopmental rat model of schizophrenia that shows increased addiction behaviors including enhanced nicotine reinforcement and drug-seeking. Methods Nicotine transdermal patch (5 mg/kg/day vs. placebo × 10 days in adolescence or adulthood) effects on subsequent radial-arm maze learning (15 sessions) and frontal-cortical-striatal nAChR densities (α4β2; [3H]-epibatidine binding) were examined in neonatal ventral hippocampal lesion (NVHL) and SHAM-operated rats. Results NVHL cognitive deficits were not differentially affected by nicotine history compared to SHAMs. Nicotine history produced minimal cognitive effects while increasing food–reward consumption on the maze, compounding with NVHL-induced overconsumption. Acute nicotine (0.5 mg/kg) delivered before the final maze sessions produced modest improvements in maze performance in rats with nicotine patch histories only, but not differentially so in NVHLs. Consistent with in vivo neuroimaging of β2 nAChR binding in schizophrenia smokers vs. non-smokers and healthy controls, adult NVHLs showed 12% reductions in nAChR binding in MPFC (p<0.05) but not ventral striatum (<5% changes, p>.40), whereas nicotine history elevated nAChRs across both regions (>30%, p<0.001) without interacting with NVHLs. Adolescent vs. adult nicotine exposure did not alter nAChRs differentially. Conclusions Although replicating nicotine-induced up-regulation of nAChRs in human smokers and demonstrating NVHL validity in terms of schizophrenia-associated nAChR density patterns, these findings do not support hypotheses explaining increased nicotine use in schizophrenia as reflecting illness-specific effects of nicotine to therapeutically alter cognition or nAChR densities.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Nicotine is more addictive, not more cognitively therapeutic in a neurodevelopmental model of schizophrenia produced by neonatal ventral hippocampal lesions
    (Wiley Blackwell (Blackwell Publishing), 2014-11) Berg, Sarah A.; Sentir, Alena M.; Cooley, Benjamin S.; Engleman, Eric A.; Chambers, R. Andrew; Department of Psychiatry, IU School of Medicine
    Nicotine dependence is the leading cause of death in the United States. However, research on high rates of nicotine use in mental illness has primarily explained this co-morbidity as reflecting nicotine's therapeutic benefits, especially for cognitive symptoms, equating smoking with 'self-medication'. We used a leading neurodevelopmental model of mental illness in rats to prospectively test the alternative possibility that nicotine dependence pervades mental illness because nicotine is simply more addictive in mentally ill brains that involve developmental hippocampal dysfunction. Neonatal ventral hippocampal lesions (NVHL) have previously been demonstrated to produce post-adolescent-onset, pharmacological, neurobiological and cognitive-deficit features of schizophrenia. Here, we show that NVHLs increase adult nicotine self-administration, potentiating acquisition-intake, total nicotine consumed and drug seeking. Behavioral sensitization to nicotine in adolescence prior to self-administration is not accentuated by NVHLs in contrast to increased nicotine self-administration and behavioral sensitization documented in adult NVHL rats, suggesting periadolescent neurodevelopmental onset of nicotine addiction vulnerability in the NVHL model. Delivering a nicotine regimen approximating the exposure used in the sensitization and self-administration experiments (i.e. as a treatment) to adult rats did not specifically reverse NVHL-induced cortical-hippocampal-dependent cognitive deficits and actually worsened cognitive efficiency after nicotine treatment stopped, generating deficits that resemble those due to NVHLs. These findings represent the first prospective evidence demonstrating a causal link between disease processes in schizophrenia and nicotine addiction. Developmental cortical-temporal limbic dysfunction in mental illness may thus amplify nicotine's reinforcing effects and addiction risk and severity, even while producing cognitive deficits that are not specifically or substantially reversible with nicotine.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Nicotine Use in Schizophrenia: a part of the cure or the disease?
    (2012-03-16) Berg, Sarah A.; Chambers, R. Andrew; Czachowski, Cristine L.; Grahame, Nicholas J.; Breier, Alan, 1953-
    Nicotine use among individuals with schizophrenia occurs at extremely high rates. The prevailing theory is that individuals with schizophrenia smoke as a form of self-medication to ameliorate sensory and cognitive deficits. However, these individuals also have enhanced rates of addiction to several drugs of abuse and may therefore smoke as a result of enhanced addiction liability. The experiments described herein explored these two hypotheses by assessing the effect that nicotine has on working memory, addiction vulnerability (locomotor sensitization and self-administration), and nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) expression as well as the developmental expression of these characteristics in the neonatal ventral hippocampal (NVHL) neurodevelopmental animal model of schizophrenia. The results from these studies indicate that NVHLs had working memory impairments in both adolescence and adulthood, with nicotine having a negligible effect. Additionally, NVHLs displayed enhanced locomotor sensitization to nicotine which emerged in adulthood as well as an enhanced acquisition of nicotine self-administration, administering more nicotine overall. These behavioral differences cannot be attributed to nAChR expression as nicotine upregulated nAChR to a similar extent between NVHL and SHAM control animals. These data indicate that the enhanced rates of nicotine use among individuals with schizophrenia may occur as a result of an enhanced vulnerability to nicotine addiction.