The enduring legacy of Peter B. Dews: Rate-dependency and impulsive choice

Substantial progress has been made in characterizing effects of a variety of drugs on impulsive behavior and elucidating some of the relevant neurobiological mechanisms. Nevertheless, there are still considerable discrepancies in the literature, both within and across studies. Recent evidence suggests that effects of drugs and other manipulations on impulsive choice can depend upon baseline levels. In this paper, we briefly summarize some of the discrepant effects of acutely administered stimulants and opioids in preclinical studies of impulsive choice and then explore the possibility that some of these discrepancies result from behavioral processes related to a principle in behavioral pharmacology first articulated by Peter B. Dews: rate-dependency. As an example of the law of initial value, rate-dependent effects occur when a drug or other treatment increases relatively low rates and decreases relatively high rates. We then summarize some of our data aimed at identifying potential behavioral mechanisms involved in these effects. In our behavioral procedures, both of these drug classes mainly decrease sensitivity to the reinforcement dimensions typically controlling impulsive choice (reinforcement magnitude and reinforcement delay), effects that can be characterized as rate-dependent. We suggest that these effects might be better described as rate-convergent and, further, that they result from a disruption/destruction of control over choice by reinforcement magnitude and delay. Nevertheless, together with previous reports of rate-dependent effects with impulsive choice, our analyses indicate that rate-dependency remains a useful framework within which to characterize effects of drugs and, thus, illustrate the enduring legacy of Peter B. Dews. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Although stimulants and opioids tend to increase and decrease impulsive choice, respectively, there is substantial variation in these effects both within and across studies. Further analyses of selected experimental results have revealed that these discrepancies may be related to behavioral processes captured by the principle of rate-dependency. It is suggested that these data illustrate the enduring contributions of Peter B. Dews to behavioral pharmacology.