Assessing Locomotor-Stimulating Effects of Cocaine in Rodents

Locomotor activity procedures are useful for characterizing the behavioral effects of a drug, the influence of pharmacological, neurobiological, and environmental manipulations on drug sensitivity, and changes in activity following repeated administration (e.g., tolerance or sensitization) are thought to be related to the development of an addiction-like behavioral phenotype. The effects of cocaine on locomotor activity have been relatively extensively characterized. Many of the published studies use between-subject experimental designs, even though changes in sensitivity within a particular individual due to experimental manipulations, or behavioral and pharmacological histories is potentially the most important outcome as these changes may relate to differential development of an addiction-like phenotype in some, but not all, animals (including humans). The two behavioral protocols described herein allow extensive within-subject analyses. The first protocol uses daily locomotor activity levels as a stable baseline to assess the effects of experimental manipulations, and the second uses a pre- versus post-session experimental design to demonstrate the importance of drug–environment interactions in determining the behavioral effects of cocaine.