Impaired behavioral sensitization to cocaine in vasopressin deficient rats

Behavioral sensitization to cocaine involves progressive and long-lasting increases in hyperactivity and stereotypy in response to the same daily dose. In order to test whether vasopressin, a neuro-hormone implicated in drug tolerance and in other models of learning and memory, affected behavioral sensitization, cocaine was administered daily to animals with hereditary absence of vasopressin. Brattleboro homozygotes which lack vasopressin show deficient onset and persistence of cocaine-induced behavioral sensitization compared to heterozygote, litter-mate controls. These data extend previous reports of vasopressin's role in memory and long-term coding of behavior to the model of pharmacologically-induced behavioral sensitization.