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Updated: Jun 28, 2026
A Procedure to Observe Context-induced Renewal of Pavlovian-conditioned Alcohol-seeking Behavior in Rats
Published on: September 19, 2014
D-cycloserine facilitates extinction of conditioned alcohol-seeking behaviour in rats
Valentina Vengeliene1, Falk Kiefer, Rainer Spanagel
1Department of Psychopharmacology, Central Institute of Mental Health (CIMH), University of Heidelberg, J5, 68159 Mannheim, Germany. valentina.vengeliene@zi-mannheim.de
Aims:
The aim of the present study was to examine the influence of partial NMDA receptor agonist d-cycloserine (DCS) on the extinction of conditioned alcohol-seeking behaviour.
Methods:
For this purpose, rats were administered with DCS 60 min before each successive extinction session. Resumption of alcohol responding was carried out 1 day after the final extinction session.
Results:
We demonstrate that treatment of rats with 5 mg/kg of DCS was capable in facilitating extinction of conditioned alcohol-seeking behaviour, which subsequently reduced the resumption of extinguished operant responding.
Conclusions:
Our study suggests a good rationale for the development of new add-on medications for exposure-based psychotherapy so as to extinguish drug-conditioned appetitive memories in alcohol-dependent patients.
