Differences in morphine and cocaine reinforcement under fixed and progressive ratio schedules; effects of extinction,...

Opiate reinforcement was evaluated under a progressive ratio (PR) schedule often used for psychostimulant self-administration (termed 'PR 3-4' because the third response requirement was four lever presses) and three additional schedules that were modified to provide successively lower levels of difficulty by decreasing the steepness of response requirement progression (termed 'PR 9-4', 'PR 14-4', and 'PR 26-4' because a response requirement of four was reached with step numbers of 9, 14 and 26, respectively). With the exception of the PR 3-4 schedule, all of the schedules supported morphine self-administration, and morphine self-administration during initial exposure and reacquisition did not differ by more than 10%. In contrast to morphine, cocaine was self-administered under the PR 3-4 schedule, with responding clearly exceeding levels during extinction. The PR 9-4 schedule was most suitable for morphine self-administration because it provided an intermediate level of difficulty, which supported levels of self-administration that exceeded values obtained under extinction but were less than those observed under FR-1. Under the PR 9-4 schedule, the number of self-administered injections of morphine was 61.5% of the number of injections obtained under a simple FR-1 schedule. This compares with a value of 21.0% for cocaine self-administration under the PR 3-4 schedule compared to an FR-1 schedule. These results show important differences in self-administration behavior supported by morphine and cocaine, which are consistent with a lower reinforcing efficacy for opiates relative to psychostimulants.