Honors Program
Honors in Psychology
Date of Award
5-2016
Thesis Professor(s)
Russell W. Brown
Thesis Professor Department
Biomedical Sciences
Abstract
Research has revealed that schizophrenics are significantly more likely to smoke cigarettes than the general population, and consume nicotine products at a much more prevalent rate. Further exacerbating this issue, it has been previously demonstrated in clinical populations that the type of antipsychotic treatment administered (typical versus atypical) may result in either an increase or a decrease of already heightened smoking behavior within the schizophrenic population. With these clinical issues in mind, the present study sought to examine the effects of antipsychotic treatment upon the associative reward of nicotine within the neonatal quinpirole model of schizophrenia. We found that treatment with the typical antipsychotic haloperidol blocked the associative reward of nicotine. Clozapine, an atypical antipsychotic, merely reduced the rewarding effects. These findings illustrate the centrality of the dopamine system, specifically the D2 receptor subtype, as an underlying mechanism of the rewarding effects of nicotine among rodents neonatally treated with quinpirole.
Publisher
East Tennessee State University
Document Type
Honors Thesis - Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Denton, Adam Ray, "The Effects of Antipsychotic Treatment upon Nicotine Associative Reward in a Neonatal Quinpirole Model of Schizophrenia" (2016). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 339. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/339
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.