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Progressive-ratio schedules of drug delivery in the analysis of drug self-administration: a review

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Abstract

 Drugs, like other reinforcers, can vary in their relative abilities to support operant responding. Considerable research has been designed to obtain useful measures of a given drug’s or dose’s ”reinforcing efficacy” and to identify the ways in which a variety of behavioral and pharmacological variables impact these measures. Progressive-ratio schedules of drug delivery generate an index of a drug’s or dose’s reinforcing efficacy (the breaking point) and are being used increasingly as tools in the analysis of drug self-administration. Progressive-ratio schedules of drug delivery have been used to characterize the effects of pretreatment drugs, lesions, drug deprivation, physical dependence, and repeated non-contingent drug exposure on breaking points. Behavioral factors, including food restriction and electric shock, and organismic factors, including gender and strain, have also been investigated using progressive-ratio schedules of drug delivery. To the extent that breaking points provide an index of reinforcing efficacy, these studies demonstrate that a wide range of variables can influence the reinforcing efficacy of self-administered drugs. The objectives of this review are to critique existing research themes, outline potential limitations of progressive-ratio procedures, and to suggest potentially fruitful uses of these procedures in future research.

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Received: 3 May 1997 / Final version: 19 March 1998

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Stafford, D., LeSage, M. & Glowa, J. Progressive-ratio schedules of drug delivery in the analysis of drug self-administration: a review. Psychopharmacology 139, 169–184 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/s002130050702

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s002130050702

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